The DOI matches its Crossref record; 125 of the 125 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
SELECTIVE ATTENTION AND LEARNING
Abstract
What do we notice and how does this affect what we learn and come to believe? I present a model of an agent who learns to make forecasts on the basis of readily available information, but is selective as to which information he attends to: he chooses whether to attend as a function of current beliefs about whether such information is predictive. If the agent does not attend to some piece of information, it cannot be recalled at a later date. He uses Bayes’ rule to update his beliefs given attended-to information, but does not attempt to fill in missing information. The model demonstrates how selective attention may lead the agent to persistently fail to recognize important empirical regularities, make systematically biased forecasts, and hold incorrect beliefs about the statistical relationship between variables. In addition, it identifies factors that make such errors more likely or persistent. The model is applied to shed light on stereotyping and discrimination, persistent learning failures and disagreement, and the process of discovery.
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Cites
Elements of Information Theory
Cover, T. M., & Thomas, J. A. (2001) · Wiley eBooks · doi:10.1002/0471200611 · Cited by 36,808
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Miller, G. A. (1994) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.101.2.343 · Cited by 17,161
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Elements of Information Theory
Cover, T. M., & Thomas, J. A. (2005) · doi:10.1002/047174882x · Cited by 13,791
Kass, R. E., & Raftery, A. E. (1995) · Journal of the American Statistical Association · doi:10.1080/01621459.1995.10476572 · Cited by 12,558
A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory.
Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006) · Journal of personality and social psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.751 · Cited by 9,708 · cited 1×
“Third, an analyst may be able to detect learning failures just by examining knowledge economic models have largely neglected how the quality of that interaction can matter, though this is emphasized in some of the psychology literature (Allport 1954; Pettigrew 1998; Pettigrew and Tropp 2006).”
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Cited by
Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field
DellaVigna, S. (2009) · Journal of Economic Literature · doi:10.1257/jel.47.2.315 · Cited by 2,365
Does Management Matter? Evidence from India *
Bloom, N., Eifert, B., Mahajan, A., McKenzie, D., & Roberts, J. (2013) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.1093/qje/qjs044 · Cited by 1,418
Optimal Sticky Prices under Rational Inattention
Maćkowiak, B., & Wiederholt, M. (2009) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.99.3.769 · Cited by 963
Savings by and for the Poor: A Research Review and Agenda
Karlan, D., Ratan, A. L., & Zinman, J. (2014) · Review of Income and Wealth · doi:10.1111/roiw.12101 · Cited by 548
Gennaioli, N., & Shleifer, A. (2010) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1399 · Cited by 435
Metadata
- Authors
- Schwartzstein, J.
- Venue
- Journal of the European Economic Association
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2014-10-03
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1423-1452
- ISSN
- 1542-4766 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1515067367
- Cited by
- 269
- References
- 125
- FWCI
- 17.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
