Engelmann, JanB., Lebreton, M., Salem-Garcia, NahuelA., Schwardmann, P. and van der Weele, JoëlJ. (2024). Anticipatory Anxiety and Wishful Thinking American Economic Review, 114(4):926--960.
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Affiliated authors
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Publication year2024
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JournalAmerican Economic Review
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{\textquoteright} cognitive effort reduces ambiguity. Wishful thinking disappears in the domain of monetary gains, indicating that negative emotions are important drivers of the phenomenon.