Forum
What is DR@W Forum?
DR@W Forum is an interdisciplinary discussion series which focuses on theoretical and empirical research about decision making.
The usual structure of the forum is a 30 - 45 minute introduction of the topic/working paper, with ample additional time for discussion.
The audience prefers discussing work-in-progress topics as opposed to finished papers. We meet on Thursdays between 2:30 and 3:45pm during term time, with streaming via Zoom. Contact John Taylor (John.Taylor[at]wbs.ac.uk) if you would like to suggest a speaker for a future event. Notifications of upcoming DR@W Forum events along with other decision research related activities can be obtained by registering with the moderated Behaviour Spotlight email list.
Note that several talks during the 2024/25 academic year are being hosted and orgnanised by the Economics department. This is indicated in the calendar entries. These talks will all take place in the Social Studies building. If you require further details regarding these sessions, please contact Matthew Ridley (Matthew.Ridley[at]Warwick.ac.uk) in the Economics department.
DR@W Forum - John Conlon (Carnegie Mellon)
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.