Abstract For many decisions, we encounter relevant information over the course of days, months, or years. We consume such information in various forms, including stories (qualitative content about individual instances) and statistics (quantitative data about collections of observations). This article proposes that information type—story versus statistic—shapes selective memory. In controlled experiments, we document a pronounced story-statistic gap in memory: the average impact of statistics on beliefs fades by 73% over the course of a day, but the impact of a story fades by only 32%. Guided by a model of selective memory, we disentangle different mechanisms and document that similarity relationships drive this gap. Recall of a story increases when its qualitative content is more similar to a memory prompt. Irrelevant information in memory that is similar to the prompt, on the other hand, competes for retrieval with relevant information, impeding successful recall.

Abstract Dissent plays an important role in any society, but dissenters are often silenced through social sanctions. Beyond their persuasive effects, rationales providing arguments supporting dissenters’ causes can increase the public expression of dissent by providing a “social cover” for voicing otherwise stigmatized positions. Motivated by a simple theoretical framework, we experimentally show that liberals are more willing to post a tweet opposing the movement to defund the police, are seen as less prejudiced, and face lower social sanctions when their tweet implies they had first read credible scientific evidence supporting their position. Analogous experiments with conservatives demonstrate that the same mechanisms facilitate anti-immigrant expression. Our findings highlight both the power of rationales and their limitations in enabling dissent and shed light on phenomena such as social movements, political correctness, propaganda, and antiminority behavior.

Abstract We study people’s subjective models of the macroeconomy and shed light on their attentional foundations. To do so, we measure beliefs about the effects of macroeconomic shocks on unemployment and inflation, providing respondents with identical information about the parameters of the shocks and previous realizations of macroeconomic variables. Within samples of 6,500 US households and 1,500 experts, beliefs are widely dispersed, even about the directional effects of shocks, and there are large differences in average beliefs between households and experts. Part of this disagreement seems to arise because respondents think of different propagation channels of the shocks, in particular demand- vs. supply-side mechanisms. We provide evidence on the role of associative memory in driving heterogeneity in thoughts and forecasts: contextual cues and prior experiences shape which propagation channels individuals retrieve and thereby which forecasts they make. Our findings offer a new perspective on the widely documented disagreement in macroeconomic expectations.

Abstract We conduct a natural field experiment with a major European party to test whether giving party supporters more voice increases their engagement in the party’s electoral campaign. In the experiment, the party asked a random subset of supporters for their opinions on the importance of different policy areas. Giving supporters opportunities to voice their opinions increases their engagement in the campaign as measured using behavioral data from the party’s smartphone application. Survey data reveals that giving voice also increases other margins of campaign effort as well as perceived voice. Our evidence highlights the importance of voice for increasing political engagement.

Abstract We provide one of the first systematic assessments of the development and determinants of economic anxiety at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Using a global data set on internet searches and two representative surveys from the United States, we document a substantial increase in economic anxiety during and after the arrival of the coronavirus. We also document a large dispersion in beliefs about the pandemic risk factors of the coronavirus and demonstrate that these beliefs causally affect individuals' economic anxieties. Finally, we show that individuals' mental models of infectious disease spread understate nonlinear growth and shape the extent of economic anxiety.