2023/10/12 by Olivier Compte, Compte, Olivier
Social Sciences · #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Culture, Economy, and Development Studies #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Economics and business #General Economics (econ.GN) #Media Influence and Politics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2310.08466
openalex publication_date 2023/10/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We propose a belief-formation model where agents attempt to discriminate between two theories, and where the asymmetry in strength between confirming and disconfirming evidence tilts beliefs in favor of theories that generate strong (and possibly rare) confirming evidence and weak (and frequent) disconfirming evidence. In our model, limitations on information processing provide incentives to censor weak evidence, with the consequence that for some discrimination problems, evidence may become mostly one-sided, independently of the true underlying theory. Sophisticated agents who know the characteristics of the censored data-generating process are not lured by this accumulation of ``evidence'', but less sophisticated ones end up with biased beliefs.