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Field
Abstract
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Before
Employing a representative US online panel, we document strong imprecision in people's beliefs about their ability to assess the accuracy of news headlines. With a randomised information experiment, we show that revelation of the true ability causally adjusts beliefs and improves their precision. The effect is stronger for subjects who are overconfident about own ability and this is driven by gender differences in the reaction to this information. Finally, we also find that the provision of information on ability increases the willingness to pay for an insurance against the risk of being harmed by misinformation, among risk-averse participants.
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After
Employing a representative US online panel, we document the existence of large errors in people's beliefs about their ability to assess the accuracy of news headlines. With a randomized information experiment, we show that revelation of the true ability causally adjusts beliefs and reduces these errors. The effect is stronger for subjects who are overconfident about own ability and this is driven by gender
di erences in the reaction to the revealed ability. Finally, we show that the adjustment in beliefs causally increases the willingness to pay to hedge against the risk of being harmed by misinformation.
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