IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_12515.html

Life’s Big Decisions in the Age of AI

Author

Listed:
  • Maryse Kathleen Ngangoue
  • Andrew Schotter
  • Bill Wang

Abstract

The Big Decisions in our lives, having a child, getting married, getting educated, etc. are transformative decisions that are hard to make. As a result, people often seek advice before making them. However, since people tend to live in homophilous social networks the advice received from their friends and neighbors may simply reinforce the decisions that people like them are already making. We investigate whether the advice offered by ChatGPT for such decisions can be useful in broadening the advice people receive and how such advice varies as we change the prompted socioeconomic backgrounds of the advisee and advisor. We find that advice tends to be confirmatory for low-income groups, in that it reinforces their established choices, while being dis-confirming for high-income groups, where it prompts reconsideration. Furthermore, even when suggesting the same choice, ChatGPT justifies that choice differently depending on who it is talking to. These findings suggest that AI-generated advice may differentially shape life’s Big Decisions across social strata.

Suggested Citation

  • Maryse Kathleen Ngangoue & Andrew Schotter & Bill Wang, 2026. "Life’s Big Decisions in the Age of AI," CESifo Working Paper Series 12515, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12515
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp12515.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Basit Zafar, 2013. "College Major Choice and the Gender Gap," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 48(3), pages 545-595.
    2. Oehler, Andreas & Horn, Matthias, 2024. "Does ChatGPT provide better advice than robo-advisors?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    3. Antoni Calvó-Armengol & Matthew O. Jackson, 2004. "The Effects of Social Networks on Employment and Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 426-454, June.
    4. Schotter,Andrew, 2023. "Advice, Social Learning and the Evolution of Conventions," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781009048880, November.
    5. Christian Fieberg & Lars Hornuf & Maximilian Meiler & David J. Streich, 2025. "Using Large Language Models for Financial Advice," CESifo Working Paper Series 11666, CESifo.
    6. Margaret Leighton & Jamin D. Speer, 2026. "Family Background and College Major Choice: Evidence on Major Earnings Growth," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 21(1), pages 121-145, Winter.
    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. Ismaël Mourifié & Marc Henry & Romuald Méango, 2020. "Sharp Bounds and Testability of a Roy Model of STEM Major Choices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(8), pages 3220-3283.
    2. Sergio Currarini & Carmen Marchiori & Alessandro Tavoni, 2016. "Network Economics and the Environment: Insights and Perspectives," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 65(1), pages 159-189, September.
    3. Jose Garcia‐Louzao & Marta Silva, 2024. "Coworker networks and the labor market outcomes of displaced workers: Evidence from Portugal," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(3), pages 389-413, July.
    4. Fossen, Frank M. & Glocker, Daniela, 2017. "Stated and revealed heterogeneous risk preferences in educational choice," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 1-25.
    5. Jaison R. Abel & Richard Deitz, 2017. "Underemployment in the Early Careers of College Graduates following the Great Recession," NBER Chapters, in: Education, Skills, and Technical Change: Implications for Future US GDP Growth, pages 149-181, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Hertweck, Friederike & Maris, Robbie & Tonin, Mirco & Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2025. "Patterns in University Applications: Socioeconomic Status, Gender, and Subject vs. Institution Preferences," IZA Discussion Papers 18331, IZA Network @ LISER.
    7. Konno, Tomohiko, 2013. "An imperfect competition on scale-free networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(21), pages 5453-5460.
    8. Schneider, Constantin J. & Yilmaz, Yahya, 2025. "Stock portfolio selection based on risk appetite: Evidence from ChatGPT," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    9. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2011. "Personnel Economics: Hiring and Incentives," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 20, pages 1769-1823, Elsevier.
    10. Michele Pellizzari, 2010. "Do Friends and Relatives Really Help in Getting a Good Job?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 63(3), pages 494-510, April.
    11. Andreia Tolciu, 2010. "The Economics of Social Interactions: An Interdisciplinary Ground for Social Scientists?," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 223-242, January.
    12. Pia M. Orrenius & Madeline Zavodny, 2015. "Does Immigration Affect Whether US Natives Major in Science and Engineering?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(S1), pages 79-108.
    13. Anabela Carneiro & Natércia Fortuna & José Varejão, 2012. "Immigrants at new destinations: how they fare and why," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(3), pages 1165-1185, July.
    14. Patrick Bayer & Stephen L. Ross, 2006. "Identifying Individual and Group Effects in the Presence of Sorting: A Neighborhood Effects Application," Working papers 2006-13, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2009.
    15. Crawford, Steven & Gray, Wesley & Johnson, Bryan & Price, Richard A., 2025. "The impact of buy-side analyst social network relationships on recommendations, price discovery, and employment outcomes," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    16. Damm, Anna Piil, 2014. "Neighborhood quality and labor market outcomes: Evidence from quasi-random neighborhood assignment of immigrants," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 139-166.
    17. Patacchini, Eleonora & Zenou, Yves, 2012. "Ethnic networks and employment outcomes," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 938-949.
    18. Julio Cesar Alonso Cifuentes & Jaime Andres Carabali, 2019. "Breve Tuturial para visualizar y Calcular Métricas de Redes (grafos) en R (para Económisas)," Icesi Economics Lecture Notes 18170, Universidad Icesi.
    19. Loviglio, Annalisa, 2023. "School Quality beyond Test Scores: The Role of Schools in Shaping Educational Outcomes," IZA Discussion Papers 16111, IZA Network @ LISER.
    20. Maestri, Virginia, 2013. "Promoting scientific faculties: Does it work? Evidence from Italy," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 168-180.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

    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:_12515. 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.