Title: Memory Rehearsal and Belief Biases

Abstract: We rely on memory to form beliefs, but we also frequently revisit memories in conversation and private reflection. I show experimentally that such rehearsal of past experiences generates systematic belief biases. Participants are given a set of experiences and then randomized to have conversations about a subset of them, either ones that reflect well or poorly on them. Such rehearsal has large effects on which of the original experiences participants can recall a week later. Crucially, participants appear naive about rehearsal effects: they take what they remember at face value when later incentivized to form accurate beliefs about the full set of original experiences. Rehearsal therefore distorts not only future recall but also future beliefs. Participants also make rehearsal choices without regard to their later distortionary effects. Intrinsic preferences for thinking about certain experiences instead drive rehearsal choices and therefore belief biases: in particular, a preference to reflect on positive experiences unintentionally generates a positivity bias in future recall and beliefs. This mechanism provides a new non-strategic channel through which seemingly motivated beliefs arise and generates novel predictions in a range of economic domains.

The title of presentation will be: An experimental evaluation of the acceptability of meat taxes. Evidence from Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and the UK.

Short bio: Sanchayan Banerjee is an Associate Professor (Sr. Lecturer) in Economics and Public Policy at King’s College London. Before this, he was an Assistant Professor of Environmental Economics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is a visiting fellow of the London School of Economics and Political Science and an affiliate of Amsterdam Sustainability Institute. His research focuses on developing citizen-oriented, participatory behavioural public policies and testing them in areas of food and energy policy, public health and charitable donations. He is an Editor of Behavioural Public Policy, an editorial member of Scientific Reports and PLOS One, and an Associated Editor of Humanities and Social Sciences Communications journals. He sits on the Steering Committee of the International Behavioural Public Policy Association. He is the founding chair and convener of Behavioural Transformations, an annual workshop of behavioural public policy for early career researchers. Sanchayan holds a PhD (2022) and MSc (2018) from the London School of Economics

Title to be advised.