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Belief Updating without Complete Trust

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  • Jawwad Noor
  • Yuzhao Yang

Abstract

We represent a non-Bayesian agent as one who does not completely trust the information they receive. The behavioral expression of complete trust lies in a homogeneity property of Bayesian updating: posterior beliefs do not change if a signal is made arbitrarily rare by scaling down its likelihood vector. We show that simply dropping this property and retaining all other Bayesian behavioral properties yields a unique representation where the agent is still Bayesian but has subjective uncertainty over the information structure generating the signal. The representation result is proved using the Fundamental Theorem of Projective Geometry. We analyze how various updating biases may be rationalized by a lack of trust.

Suggested Citation

  • Jawwad Noor & Yuzhao Yang, 2026. "Belief Updating without Complete Trust," Papers 2609.04622, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2609.04622
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    File URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.04622
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. J. Aislinn Bohren & Daniel N. Hauser, 2025. "Misspecified Models in Learning and Games," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 17(1), pages 427-451, August.
    2. Pietro Ortoleva, 2024. "Alternatives to Bayesian Updating," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 16(1), pages 545-570, August.
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