Join us for the next Norms and Behavioral Change Talk on Thursday, March 19th, 2026 at 1:00pm EST with Dr. Marta Serra-Garcia of The University of California, San Diego!
Abstract: In this talk I will present recent work that asks: How does information transmission change when it requires attracting the attention of receivers? I will focus on a recent paper that combines an experiment that varies freelance professionals’ incentives to attract attention about scientific findings, with several online experiments that exogenously expose receivers to the content created. We find that attention incentives lead to significantly less information being transmitted, but not more factually inaccurate content. These incentives increase information demand and the knowledge of interested receivers. However, among the majority of receivers who do not demand more information, attention incentives lower knowledge and increase biases in beliefs, revealing that missing information can be a channel through which misperceptions arise. I will discuss the implications of these findings, follow-up work, and open questions for future research.
Visit her personal website here
Zoom - Register here for Zoom Link.