Eugenio Verrina, Professeur à l'Université Lumière Lyon 2 et Chercheur au GATE

Nous vous donnons rendez-vous jeudi 17 septembre 2026 pour le séminaire d'Eugenio Verrina, Professeur d'Economie à l'Université Lumière Lyon 2 et Chercheur au GATE.

Titre de sa présentation : Belief formation and social Identity

Résumé : Selection neglect and correlation neglect, i.e., the failure to account for selection and correlation in the information one receives, lead to biased beliefs and are two key drivers behind belief polarization. Social identity is often embedded in environments with selected and correlated signals, with echo chambers as a prime example. In these contexts, people inside one’s echo chamber can be perceived as part of one's in-group, e.g., because of a shared political affiliation, while people outside one's echo chamber can be perceived as part of one's out-group. We study how the combination of social identity and selection neglect or correlation neglect affects belief formation. We design a novel experimental paradigm where receivers guess a randomly-generated number based on the estimates of multiple senders. We manipulate i) whether the signal structure can induce selection neglect or correlation neglect, and ii) the presence of social identities. We find that selection neglect is exacerbated when the omitted signals are from out-group senders. In contrast, if the omitted signals are from in-group senders, subjects become better at accounting for selection. Similarly, correlation neglect worsens when in-group signals are correlated, while it improves when correlation is on the out-group. Moreover, we show that social identity alone causes no bias, suggesting it is the combination of selection neglect or correlation neglect with social identity that drives our results. Finally, we provide some evidence for the mechanisms underlying our results. Our findings offer insights into the determinants of polarization and have important implications for the design of information structure and of policies aimed at reducing it..

 
Le séminaire a lieu à 11h15, au GAEL.