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The Weight of Personal Experience: an Experimental Measurement

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  • Zacharias Maniadis
  • Joshua Miller

Abstract

We present an experiment to address the question of whether a piece of information is more influential if it comes from experience, rather than from another source. We employ a novel experimental design which controls for the value of information and other potentially important confounding factors present in related studies. Overall, our results show that an event that is personally experienced has a stronger influence on subsequent behavior than an observed event with equally valuable information content. Importantly, in early rounds when information is more valuable from a rational viewpoint, this overweighting of personal experience is not statistically significant. JEL Classification Numbers: C90; C91; Keywords: Experiments; Learning; Observation; Reinforcement Learning; Belief-Based Learning

Suggested Citation

  • Zacharias Maniadis & Joshua Miller, 2012. "The Weight of Personal Experience: an Experimental Measurement," Working Papers 452, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    • Handle: RePEc:igi:igierp:452
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Oyarzun, Carlos & Sanjurjo, Adam & Nguyen, Hien, 2017. "Response functions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 1-31.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    experiments; learning; observation; reinforcement learning; belief-based learning;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

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