Sili Zhang 

Can people counteract biased narratives with subsequent information? Using an online experiment where counteracting may have the best odds by design, we investigate this question by first randomly assigning subjects to read different narratives that contain the same facts, and then offering them the opportunity to acquire and process balanced arguments. We document three main findings. First, subjects shift their attitudes towards the standpoint of the randomly assigned narrative, knowing that the narrative is slanted and randomly assigned. Second, the opportunity to read additional arguments does not prompt subjects to counteract the persuasion effects of the initial narratives. Third, when evaluating subsequent arguments, participants find arguments aligned with the randomly assigned narrative more convincing. These findings remain qualitatively similar in additional treatments where the balanced arguments are provided two weeks after initial exposure to narratives. Only when we replace these arguments with the exact opposing narratives that subjects do not initially see are they able to fully counteract the effects. Taken together, our results highlight the importance of balanced and complete exposure at the outset in counteracting the influence of biased narratives.

This paper presents experimental and survey evidence that projection--the tendency to project one's current valuations or states onto the future---generates state-dependent behavior that can be attributed to time preferences, and that such state-dependence can be mitigated by experience. In a real-effort experiment, individuals' intertemporal choice is primarily driven by the randomized decision states rather than by time variation. This observed state dependence can be remedied by experiencing the exact states at the aggregate level, but persists for those with a higher projection tendency separately measured by a survey question. These findings help to disentangle the microfoundations of projection bias and present bias based on the presence of experience effects, and provide a rationale for perception- or simulation-based interventions to promote future-oriented behavior in applied settings.

We study consumers' concerns for values expressed by their market counterparts and how such concerns affect the public promotion of values. Combining three experiments across multiple populations with diverse values, we document that consumers are willing to pay premiums to exchange with counterparts who support their values, with such preferences exhibiting stronger negative reactions to value misalignment than favoritism towards value alignment. Sellers anticipate these preferences and shift their observable actions towards supporting consumers’ values when there are potential gains from market exchange. Our findings suggest that value positions create a dimension of firm differentiation, provide causal evidence that possibilities for market exchange can influence public support for values, and have direct implications for when firms are likely to adopt value positions.

Standard economic arguments treat state dependence as a reason to value flexibility. This paper shows that it can instead generate demand for commitment when individuals anticipate that future states will distort their decisions. A conceptual framework formalizes two channels: state-dependent valuations (e.g., projection bias) and state-dependent decision mistakes (e.g., scarcity effects). We test its predictions in a field experiment in Uganda, where farmers are offered pay-at-harvest crop insurance---a product that aligns the timing of payment and payouts and thus shuts down present-bias as a source of commitment---for two seasons. Forty percent of farmers commit to purchase the insurance for two seasons. An intervention increasing sophistication about future state dependence raises commitment demand by 11 percentage points. Additional evidence suggests heterogeneity by proxies for both projection bias and scarcity, consistent with the two modeled channels. Our results highlight the importance of individuals' sophistication about future state dependence for welfare analysis and policy design, particularly in environments with high state variability.

Do consumers naively reward corporate value endorsement? In an online market experiment, U.S. consumers reason about and buy from sellers who endorse values with varying strategic incentives and costs. Consumers reward value-endorsing sellers but discount strategically motivated endorsements; surprisingly, costly endorsements do not outperform cheap ones. Consumers' beliefs appear sophisticated: they anticipate pandering, understand selection, but also expect a larger strategic response when endorsement is costly. A rational-inference benchmark approximates observed willingness-to-pay for strategic sellers, indicating that consumers reward a calibrated probability of genuine alignment. Open-ended narratives reveal consumers' sophistication outside the experiment, where profit and genuine motives are both recognized. These findings help explain why cheap value appeals persist and suggest that the main friction is not consumer credulity, but limited responsiveness to the intensity of costly commitment.