13:30 - 15:00
Room: Floor 1, Room 108, Nature House
Chair/s:
Diego Marino Fages
Diego Marino Fages - Motivated Forecasts: Evidence from the Presidential Elections in Argentina
Ülkü Bicakci - When Science Challenges Beliefs: Experimental Evindence on the Erosion of Trust in Science
Đorđe Milosav - The Effects of Travel Restrictions on Citizens’ Perceptions of State Legitimacy: A System Justification Perspective
Vittorio Merola - What Shapes Political Information Processing? Experimentally Testing Motivational Versus Bayesian Explanations
Motivated Forecasts: Evidence from the Presidential Elections in Argentina
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Presented by: Diego Marino Fages
Diego Marino Fages
Durham University
The increasing polarization in political issues over the world calls for a better understanding of how people form and express their beliefs (Canen et al, 2020). I ask whether peoples’ forecasts about important economic indicators (e.g., inflation) are affected by their political preferences (i.e., biased). I conduct a pre-registered online experiment in a high uncertainty political context given by the 2023 presidential elections in Argentina. The experiment exogenously manipulates the incentives to report accurate forecasts about economic indicators and information about the current levels of the same indicators. I find that incentivising responses reduces the gap between subjects' forecasts regarding the performance of different presidential candidates and explore what drives the results.