Preference conformism: An experiment

Enrique Fatas, Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap, David Rojo Arjona

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch Articlepeer-review

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper reports on an experiment designed to test whether people's preferences change to become more alike. Such preference conformism would be worrying for an economics that takes individual preferences as given (‘de gustibus es non disputandum’). So the test is important. But it is also difficult. People can behave alike for many reasons and the key to the design of our test, therefore, is the control of the other possible reasons for observing apparent peer effects. We find evidence of preference conformism in the aggregate and at the individual level (where there is heterogeneity). It appears also to be more consistent with Festinger's epistemic account of why it might occur than that of Social Identity Theory.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)71-82
Number of pages12
JournalEuropean Economic Review
Volume105
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2018
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Finance
  • Economics and Econometrics

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