Paper by Joël van der Weele and Jan Engelmann has been published in the American Economic Review
The article "Anticipatory Anxiety and Wishful Thinking" by research fellows Joël van der Weele and Jan Engelmann (both University of Amsterdam) and co-authors Maël Lebreton, Nahuel A. Salem-Garcia and Peter Schwardmann has been published in the American Economic Review.
Abstract
Across five experiments (N=1,714), we test whether people engage in wishful thinking to alleviate anxiety about adverse future outcomes. Participants perform pattern recognition tasks in which some patterns may result in an electric shock or a monetary loss. Diagnostic of wishful thinking, participants are less likely to correctly identify patterns that are associated with a shock or loss. Wishful thinking is more pronounced under more ambiguous signals and only reduced by higher accuracy incentives when participants' cognitive effort reduces ambiguity. Wishful thinking disappears in the domain of monetary gains, indicating that negative emotions are important drivers of the phenomenon.
Article citation and access to full article:
Jan B. Engelmann, Maël Lebreton, Nahuel A. Salem-Garcia, Peter Schwardmann, and Joël van der Weele, Anticipatory Anxiety and Wishful Thinking, American Economic Review, vol. 114, no. 4, April 2024, pp. 926-60.
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