Belief Elicitation as Behavioral Design

Last registered on August 01, 2025

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Belief Elicitation as Behavioral Design

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0016348

Initial registration date

July 28, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

August 01, 2025, 10:10 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name

Tony Hua

Affiliation

University of California, Merced

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Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2025-07-28

End date

2026-06-01

Keywords

Behavior, Lab

Additional Keywords

information avoidance, moral wiggle-room, social norms, social appropriateness, dishonesty, experiment

JEL code(s)

C72, C91, D8, D9

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

This pre-registered study tests whether prompting individuals to forecast others’ behavior reduces self-serving choices in ethically relevant decisions. Across two domains—ignorance in a dictator game and dishonesty in a private die-roll task—I examine whether belief elicitation activates internalized social norms and reduces moral disengagement. The design varies the timing and content of belief prompts to identify their causal impact, while controlling for confounds such as interface changes or norm framing. Results will speak to the psychological mechanisms through which norms shape behavior and evaluate whether belief elicitation functions not only as a measurement tool but also as a behavioral intervention.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Hua, Tony. 2025. "Belief Elicitation as Behavioral Design." AEA RCT Registry. August 01. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.16348-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

This experiment relies on the elicitation of subjects' beliefs, specifically, what they believe others do, before making their decision in a similar decision environment.

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2025-07-28

Intervention End Date

2026-06-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Using the between subjects design, our main outcome of interest for the moral wiggle room game is the ignorance rate and elicited belief regarding the ignorance rates about other subjects across the different treatment arms. Ignorance rate is calculated as a proportion of subjects within a treatment arm who did not reveal information regarding the recipient's payoffs. Elicited beliefs on ignorance will be quantified between 0 to 100 percent.

In the dice rolling game, the main variable of interest is the distribution of dice reports and a similarly elicited belief on whether or not others misreported or truthfully reported the dice roll. This will be compared between the treatments and with a uniform distribution (denoting truthful reporting).

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

In a between subjects design, subjects are asked to play either the moral wiggle room game or the dice rolling game. Within each game, depending on the treatment arm, subjects' beliefs about what others do is elicited ex-ante or ex-post their own decision. Afterwards, subjects complete a questionnaire.

Experimental Design Details

There are two decision making tasks that compose of this study: the moral wiggle room or the dice rolling game.

In the moral wiggle room game, the experiment is divided into a belief elicitation stage, a decision stage, and a questionnaire. Treatment varies conditions of when subjects' beliefs about what others do are elicited. In the Pre-Belief treatment, subjects first estimate the percentage of subjects who revealed the payoffs in the belief elicitation before entering the decision stage. In the Post-Belief treatment, the ordering of the belief elicitation and decision stages are flipped with subjects beginning with the decision stage first. Lastly, in the Placebo condition, subjects estimate an unrelated statistic about others.

The dice rolling game follows the same procedure as the moral wiggle room game, including the Pre-Belief, Post-Belief, and Placebo conditions. However, a second dimension of variation is included in terms of framing, either framed as asking if subjects believe others misreported their dice rolls or framed as asking if others truthfully reported their dice rolls.

In all treatment conditions, subjects will complete a questionnaire after the belief elicitation and decision stages.

Randomization Method

Computer randomization and balanced assignment for treatment arms. Subjects are assigned randomly to each treatment within each decision making task.

Randomization Unit

Individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

N/A

Sample size: planned number of observations

Moral wiggle room: 150 to 375 Dice rolling game: 600-1200 Total: 1350 - 1575

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

At least 50 subjects per treatment arm in the moral wiggle room game with 3 treatment arms.
At least 100 subjects per treatment arm in the dice rolling game with 6 treatment arms.
Higher N depends on budget constraints

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Moral Wiggle Room Game In line with Dana, Weber, and Kuang 2007, with a conservative assumption of a 20 percentage point treatment effect (e.g. 60% versus 40% ignorance), then a power analysis for a two-sided test with an alpha of 0.05 and a power of 0.80 indicates about 97 participants per group. However, based on a previous study's exploratory findings, the difference may be as much as 30 percentage point, allowing for reliable detection with about 50 participants. A total of 3 treatment arms between experiments approximated to a target of about 100 to 125 participants per arm (300 to 375 total), depending on the power. Dice Rolling Game The goal is to test whether the distribution of reported outcomes in each group differs from the uniform distribution, and whether treatment affects that distribution. Based on Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi 2013 who recruited 265 subjects, a Chi-square test with a medium effect size between of 0.20 requires a minimum sample size of about 198 participants per treatment arm, rounding up to 200 in case of missing data or incomplete subject responses.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB