Some popular beliefs about the economy are at odds with expert research; they check if a refutation text changes people’s beliefs about rent controls; with economics students, most people stick to their beliefs after reading the refutation text

Dispelling misconceptions about economics. Jordi Brandts et al. Journal of Economic Psychology, November 9 2021, 102461. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2021.102461

Highlights

• Some popular beliefs about the economy are at odds with expert research.

• We study if a refutation text changes people’s beliefs about rent controls.

• Both in the lab and field the text induces a belief change towards expert knowledge.

• In the field, with economics students, the text is more effective than teaching.

• Most people, however, stick to their beliefs after reading the refutation text.

Abstract: Some popular views about the workings of the economy are completely at odds with solid empirical evidence and congruent theoretical explanations and therefore can be qualified as misconceptions. Such beliefs lead to support for harmful policies. Cognitive biases may contribute to explaining why misconceptions persist even when scientific information is provided to people. We conduct two experimental studies to investigate, for the first time in economics, whether presenting information in a refutational way affects people’s beliefs about an important socio-economic issue on which expert consensus is very strong: the harmful effects of rent controls. In the laboratory (Study 1) both our refutational and non-refutational messages induce a belief change in the direction of expert knowledge. The refutational message, however, does not improve significantly on the non-refutational one. In the field (Study 2), where participants are college students receiving economic training, the refutational text improves, subject to some caveats, on standard instruction but not on the non-refutational message. The main overall implications of our results are that providing information moderately reduces the misconception, but does not eliminate it, and that the refutational approach does not work better than providing the same information in a non-refutational manner.

JEL A12 A2 D9 I2

Keywords: MisconceptionsCognitive biasRefutationExperimentEconomic communicationRent control