The Preference for Belief Consonance

an article by Russell Golman and George Loewenstein (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Ove Moene (University of Oslo, Norway) and Luca Zarri (University of Verona, Italy) published in Journal of Economic Perspectives Volume 30 Number 3 Summer 2016

Abstract

We consider the determinants and consequences of a source of utility that has received limited attention from economists: people's desire for the beliefs of other people to align with their own. We relate this 'preference for belief consonance' to a variety of other constructs that have been explored by economists, including identity, ideology, homophily, and fellow-feeling.

We review different possible explanations for why people care about others' beliefs and propose that the preference for belief consonance leads to a range of disparate phenomena, including motivated belief-formation, proselytizing, selective exposure to media, avoidance of conversational minefields, pluralistic ignorance, belief-driven clustering, intergroup belief polarization, and conflict.

We also discuss an explanation for why disputes are often so intense between groups whose beliefs are, by external observers' standards, highly similar to one-another.

JEL Classification: D12, D83, Z13

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