IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_11282.html

Critical Thinking and Storytelling Contexts

Author

Listed:
  • Brian Jabarian
  • Elia Sartori

Abstract

We argue that storytelling contexts – the way information is communicated through varying credibility sources, visual designs, writing styles, and content delivery – impact the effectiveness of surveys and elections in eliciting preferences formed through critical thinking (reasoned preferences). Through an artefactual field experiment with a US sample (N = 725), incentivized by an (LLM), we find that intermediate storytelling contexts prompt critical thinking more effectively than basic or sophisticated ones. Sensitivity to these contexts is linked to individual cognitive traits, and participants with a high need for cognition are particularly responsive to intermediate contexts. In a conceptual framework, we explore how critical thinkers impact the efficiency of elections and polls in aggregating reasoned preferences. Storytelling contexts that effectively prompt critical thinking improve election efficiency. However, the in-decisiveness of critical thinkers can have ambiguous effects on election bias, potentially posing challenges for principals who are required to act on these election outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Brian Jabarian & Elia Sartori, 2024. "Critical Thinking and Storytelling Contexts," CESifo Working Paper Series 11282, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11282
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp11282.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1997. "Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1029-1058, September.
    2. Enrico Cantoni & Vincent Pons, 2022. "Does Context Outweigh Individual Characteristics in Driving Voting Behavior? Evidence from Relocations within the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(4), pages 1226-1272, April.
    3. Innocenti, Alessandro, 2017. "Virtual reality experiments in economics," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 71-77.
    4. B. Douglas Bernheim & Luca Braghieri & Alejandro Martínez-Marquina & David Zuckerman, 2021. "A Theory of Chosen Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(2), pages 720-754, February.
    5. Kfir Eliaz & Ran Spiegler, 2020. "A Model of Competing Narratives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(12), pages 3786-3816, December.
    6. Glenn W. Harrison & John A. List, 2004. "Field Experiments," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1009-1055, December.
    7. John A. List & Lina M. Ramírez & Julia Seither & Jaime Unda & Beatriz Vallejo, 2024. "Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Misinformation: Evidence from a Demand Side Field Experiment on Critical Thinking," NBER Working Papers 32367, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Chad Kendall & Ryan Oprea, 2024. "On the complexity of forming mental models," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(1), pages 175-211, January.
    9. Stefanie Stantcheva, 2021. "Understanding Tax Policy: How do People Reason?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(4), pages 2309-2369.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Blesse, Sebastian & Gruendler, Klaus & Heil, Philipp & Hermes, Henning, 2025. "The Demand for Economic Narratives," CEPR Discussion Papers 20759, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    2. Fréchette, Guillaume R & Vespa, Emanuel & Yuksel, Sevgi, 2025. "Extracting Statistical Relationships from Observational Data: Predicting with Full or Partial Information," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt57x6d5sw, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    3. Brian Jabarian & Elia Sartori, 2023. "Critical Thinking Via Storytelling: Theory and Social Media Experiment," Papers 2303.16422, arXiv.org.
    4. Chiara Aina & Florian H. Schneider, 2025. "Weighting Competing Models," CEBI working paper series 25-04, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    5. Luca Corazzini & Marco Diamante & Valeria Maggian, 2026. "Are hopeful narratives more convincing? A laboratory experiment," Working Papers 2026: 02, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    6. Sheen S. Levine & Oliver Schilke & Olenka Kacperczyk & Lynne G. Zucker, 2023. "Primer for Experimental Methods in Organization Theory," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(6), pages 1997-2025, November.
    7. Alda Botelho Azevedo & Inês Gonçalves & João Pereira dos Santos, 2025. "Can’t Buy Me Home – Beliefs, Facts, and Policy in the Housing Affordability Crisis," GEE Papers 191, Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia, revised Jun 2025.
    8. Botelho Azevedo, Alda & Gonçalves, Inês & Pereira dos Santos, João, 2025. "Can’t Buy Me Home: Beliefs, Facts, and Policy in the Housing Affordability Crisis," IZA Discussion Papers 18073, IZA Network @ LISER.
    9. Deng, Weiguang & Li, Dayang & Zhou, Dong, 2019. "Beauty and Job Accessibility: New Evidence from a Field Experiment," GLO Discussion Paper Series 369, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    10. Burkhard Schipper & Hee Yeul Woo, 2012. "Political Awareness and Microtargeting of Voters in Electoral Competition," Working Papers 124, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    11. Mujcic, Redzo & Frijters, Paul, 2013. "Still Not Allowed on the Bus: It Matters If You're Black or White!," IZA Discussion Papers 7300, IZA Network @ LISER.
    12. Francesco Capozza & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2021. "Studying Information Acquisition in the Field: A Practical Guide and Review," CEBI working paper series 21-15, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    13. Collewet, Marion & Fairley, Kim & Kessels, Roselinde & Knoef, Marike & van Vliet, Olaf, 2024. "The design of welfare: unraveling taxpayers' preferences," OSF Preprints 4am7e, Center for Open Science.
    14. repec:rza:wpaper:227 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Ersoy, Fulya Y., 2025. "Do incentives matter in elicitation of beliefs?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    16. Dezső, Linda & Ertl, Antal & Chukaeva, Valeriia & Hajdu, Gergely, 2026. "Carry-over effects in the within-subject spectator task," SocArXiv 9d5x4_v1, Center for Open Science.
    17. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    18. Meirowitz, Adam, 2005. "Deliberative Democracy or Market Democracy: Designing Institutions to Aggregate Preferences and Information," Papers 03-28-2005, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
    19. Marianne Bertrand & Dean S. Karlan & Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir & Jonathan Zinman, 2005. "What's Psychology Worth? A Field Experiment in the Consumer Credit Market," Working Papers 918, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    20. Andrea Baranzini & Stefano Carattini & Linda Tesauro, 2021. "Designing Effective and Acceptable Road Pricing Schemes: Evidence from the Geneva Congestion Charge," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 79(3), pages 417-482, July.
    21. Bhattacharya, Sourav & Duffy, John & Kim, Sun-Tak, 2014. "Compulsory versus voluntary voting: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 111-131.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11282. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.