{"title":"When Information Conflicts with Obligations: the Role of Motivated Cognition","authors":"Ao Wang, Shaoda Wang, Xiaoyang Ye","doi":"10.1093/ej/uead037","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract We experimentally test how psychological motivations can impact the processing of purely objective information. We first document that, when the high-stakes College Entrance Exam is held in the month of Ramadan, Chinese Muslim students perform significantly worse. When asked about the impact of fasting, they severely underestimate the cost of taking the exam during Ramadan, even when presented with direct empirical evidence. In the experiment, we randomly offer students reading materials in which well-respected Muslim clerics explain that it is permissible to postpone the fast until after the exam. Consistent with an interpretation of motivated cognition, students who receive the material distort the statistics about the fasting cost significantly less and become more accepting of delaying the fast for the exam.","PeriodicalId":48448,"journal":{"name":"Economic Journal","volume":"386 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Economic Journal","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/uead037","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract We experimentally test how psychological motivations can impact the processing of purely objective information. We first document that, when the high-stakes College Entrance Exam is held in the month of Ramadan, Chinese Muslim students perform significantly worse. When asked about the impact of fasting, they severely underestimate the cost of taking the exam during Ramadan, even when presented with direct empirical evidence. In the experiment, we randomly offer students reading materials in which well-respected Muslim clerics explain that it is permissible to postpone the fast until after the exam. Consistent with an interpretation of motivated cognition, students who receive the material distort the statistics about the fasting cost significantly less and become more accepting of delaying the fast for the exam.
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The Economic Journal is the Royal Economic Society''s flagship title, and is one of the founding journals of modern economics. Over the past 125 years the journal has provided a platform for high quality and imaginative economic research, earning a worldwide reputation excellence as a general journal publishing papers in all fields of economics for a broad international readership. It is invaluable to anyone with an active interest in economic issues and is a key source for professional economists in higher education, business, government and the financial sector who want to keep abreast of current thinking in economics.
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