Imagining the future

• Verfasst von: Bordalo, Pedro [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Burro, Giovanni [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Coffman, Katherine B. [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Gennaioli, Nicola [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Shleifer, Andrei [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Imagining the future
• Titelzusatz: memory, simulation, and beliefs
• Verf.angabe: Pedro Bordalo, Giovanni Burro, Katherine Coffman, Nicola Gennaioli and Andrei Shleifer
• E-Jahr: 2025
• Jahr: May 2025
• Umfang: 32 S.
• Illustrationen: Illustrationen
• Fussnoten: Online verfügbar: 27. Juni 2024, Korrektur und Schriftsatz: 2. August 2024 ; Gesehen am 23.06.2025
• Titel Quelle: Enthalten in: The review of economic studies
• Ort Quelle: Oxford : Oxford Univ. Pr., 1933
• Jahr Quelle: 2025
• Band/Heft Quelle: 92(2025), 3 vom: Mai, Seite 1532-1563
• ISSN Quelle: 1467-937X
• DOI: doi:10.1093/restud/rdae070
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• K10plus-PPN: 1909435082

Abstract

How do people form beliefs about novel risks, with which they have little or no experience? Motivated by survey data on beliefs about COVID we collected in 2020, we build a model based on the psychology of selective memory. When a person thinks about an event, different experiences compete for retrieval, and retrieved experiences are used to simulate the event based on how similar they are to it. The model predicts that different experiences interfere with each other in recall and that non-domain-specific experiences can bias beliefs based on their similarity to the assessed event. We test these predictions using data from our COVID survey and from a primed-recall experiment about cyberattack risk. In line with our theory of similarity-based retrieval and simulation, experiences and their measured similarity to the cued event help account for experience effects, priming effects, and the interaction of the two in shaping beliefs.