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Preference conformism: An experiment

  • Enrique Fatas
  • , Shaun P. Hargreaves-Heap (Lead Author)
  • , David Rojo Arjona

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

28 Citations (Scopus)
20 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper reports on an experiment designed to test whether people's preferences change to become more alike. Such preference conformism would be worrying for an economics that takes individual preferences as given (‘de gustibus es non disputandum’). So the test is important. But it is also difficult. People can behave alike for many reasons and the key to the design of our test, therefore, is the control of the other possible reasons for observing apparent peer effects. We find evidence of preference conformism in the aggregate and at the individual level (where there is heterogeneity). It appears also to be more consistent with Festinger's epistemic account of why it might occur than that of Social Identity Theory.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)71-82
Number of pages12
JournalEuropean Economic Review
Volume105
Early online date23 Mar 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2018

Keywords

  • Conformism
  • Endogenous preferences

Access to Document

  • Published manuscript

    This is an open access article under the CC BY license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

    Final published version, 448 KBLicence: CC BY

    • Network for Intergrated Behavioural Science

      Starmer, C. (Principal Investigator), Turocy, T. (Principal Investigator), Barr, A. (Co-Investigator), Brown, G. (Co-Investigator), Chater, N. (Co-Investigator), Cubitt, R. (Co-Investigator), Fatas, E. (Co-Investigator), Gathergood, J. (Co-Investigator), Gosling, S. (Co-Investigator), Lomes, G. (Co-Investigator), MacKay, R. (Co-Investigator), Poulsen, A. (Co-Investigator), Read, D. (Co-Investigator), Stewart, N. (Co-Investigator), Sugden, R. (Co-Investigator) & Zizzo, D. (Co-Investigator)

      Economic and Social Research Council

      31/12/12 → 30/12/16

      Project: Research

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