Self Confidence Spillovers and Motivated Beliefs

By:	Ritwik Banerjee (Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and IZA); Nabanita Datta Gupta (Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University, Denmark);Marie Claire Villeval (University of Lyon)
Abstract:	Is success in a task used strategically by individuals to motivate their beliefs prior to taking action in a subsequent, unrelated, task? Also, is the distortion of beliefs reinforced for individuals who have lower status in society? Conducting an artefactual field experiment in India, we show that success when competing in a task increases the performers’ self-confidence and competitiveness in the subsequent task. We also find that such spillovers affect the self-confidence of low-status individuals more than that of high-status individuals. Receiving good news under Affirmative Action, however, boosts confidence across tasks regardless of the caste status.
Keywords:	Motivated beliefs, spillovers, self-confidence, competitiveness, Affirmative Action, experiment
JEL:	C91 J15 M52
URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aah:aarhec:2018-02&r=ltv