SInnoPSis Scholars on tour – Second trip to Madrid!
October 11, 2023
Daniele Fanelli Presentation on Measuring the complexity elephant in the metascientific room.
January 11, 2024
A presentation by Zacharias Maniadis:
In a set of preregistered experiments with the UK general population, experimental participants receive recommended answers to an economics questionnaire by two computerized advisors. One advisor is of high accuracy (‘the Expert’) and recommends the answers produced by academic consensus. The other advisor is of low accuracy (‘the Populist’), and recommends the modal answers of participants from a pilot study. We examine which advisor participants select to answer the questionnaire on their behalf. Our participants overwhelmingly choose the Populist, even when fully informed about the modus operandi of the two advisors. Bayesian models fail to explain these choices, even in the degenerate case where participants should be able to identify the Expert with 100% accuracy. Overconfidence partly accounts for advisor choice, while ego-involvement cannot explain behaviour.