Diverging Opinions

People often see the same evidence but draw opposite conclusions, becoming polarized over time. More surprisingly, disagreements persist even when they are commonly known. We derive a model and present an experiment showing that opinions can diverge when onedimensional opinions are formed from two-d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American economic journal. Microeconomics 2012-02, Vol.4 (1), p.209-232
Main Authors: Andreoni, James, Mylovanov, Tymofiy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Absolute value
Agreements
Betting
Decision making
Dictators
Economic models
Economic statistics
Economic theory
Expected values
Experiments
Microeconomics
Opinions
Public information
Rational choice theory
Rationality
State of nature
Statistical significance
Studies
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Summary:People often see the same evidence but draw opposite conclusions, becoming polarized over time. More surprisingly, disagreements persist even when they are commonly known. We derive a model and present an experiment showing that opinions can diverge when onedimensional opinions are formed from two-dimensional information.When subjects are given sufficient information to reach agreement, however, disagreement persists. Subjects discount information when it is filtered through the actions of others, but not when it is presented directly, indicating that common knowledge of disagreement may be the result of excessive skepticism about the decision-making skills of others.
ISSN:1945-7669
1945-7685
DOI:10.1257/mic.4.1.209