Vasilisa Werner

Screenshot of the email announcing Visilisa's talk, "Destructive Communication" with headshot, affiliation, title and abstract. The abstract reads: "Does communication always promote socially efficient behavior? We challenge this common proposition by showing that communication becomes destructive in polarized contexts. In an online experiment, we investigate what happens when participants who fundamentally disagree communicate. We exogenously vary the degree of polarization and the participants’ ability to communicate. When participants are sufficiently polarized, communication no longer improves trust and significantly reduces trustworthiness. Using natural language processing and supervised machine learning, we document that a substantial fraction of participants focus their communication on being polarized, leading to a destructive effect on both trust and trustworthiness. Our findings challenge the universality of contact theory, highlighting that communication may backfire in settings where parties hold opposing views."

Screenshort from the seminar announcement email with title "Individual Preferences for Truth-Telling", abstract and headshot of Lisa. The abstract reads: "Contrary to the traditional economic view that individuals misreport private information to maximize material payoffs, recent evidence highlights robust preferences for truth-telling among many decision-makers. Theoretical models that align with aggregate behavioral patterns posit that these preferences arise from both an intrinsic motivation to be honest and a desire to be perceived as honest. We propose a novel incentivized measure to independently capture these two motives at the individual level for the first time. We validate the measure’s properties experimentally and show that it predicts behavior in other commonly studied situations that allow for (dis)honesty. The measure enables the classification of individual preference types, revealing systematic heterogeneity and fairly stable type distributions across different samples. Additionally, we propose an experimentally validated 2-minute survey module that proxies both motives and predicts behavior in a typical reporting task. Including this module in a large panel, we offer first insights into how early-life experiences may shape preferences for being and being seen as honest."

How strong are contrast effects?

Join us at the U Penn seminar and find out:

After @vasilisawerner.bsky.social presents her super-polished (former JM) paper, "Destructive Communication", I will present "Individual Preferences for Truth-Telling".

Tomorrow, 7 pm CET. Registration: shorturl.at/mD1qe

Two presentation slides. The one above defines a normal form game as a table listing players' strategies and payoffs. The one below (from my PhD class) provides a lengthy, technical definition of a normal form game, accompanied by extensive notation.

Just started putting together a game theory slide set for my bachelor's class. Unfortunately, the only reference I have is my PhD-level deck. Same-same but different.

A new DP on partial cartels and ringleader discrimination is out. Check it out!

I couldn't be more grateful for three fantastic years in Berlin @cepa-unipotsdam.bsky.social and @bsoeberlin.bsky.social!

I'm thrilled to announce that I joined @uniofgalway.bsky.social @uniofgalwaycairnes.bsky.social for a permanent position as an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Economics. I'm excited to start a new chapter here and looking forward to getting to know everyone!

Thrilled to share that this September I’ll be joining @sotonecon.bsky.social at @unisouthampton.bsky.social pton.bsky.social as a Lecturer 🎉

I look forward to continuing my research in IO, experimental economics, and human-AI interactions, and to engaging more with the UK econ community.

Apply now!

Key takeaways:

🔸Communication reduces suspicion compared to no communication and pre-chat levels.
🔸Suspicion decreases further when receivers learn their sender’s past dictator behavior, especially if it was generous.
🔸The tone of a message can be even more important than its content.

#EconSky

Overall, communication substantially reduces suspicion, but some receivers become more suspicious during the communication. We disentangle these effects using machine learning methods to analyze the chat logs.

N/N

We focus on the impact of open communication on the receivers’ suspicion as measured by the size of the deviation from the senders’ recommendation before and after the communication.

3/N

In this paper, we study how communication influences suspicion. The experiment uses a senderreceiver setup with a low probability of misaligned incentives for senders and receivers.

2/N

A new discussion paper "Suspicion and Communication" (w/ Lisa Bruttel and Friedericke Fromme) is out now! Check it out: ideas.repec.org/p/pot/cepadp...

1/N
@cepa-unipotsdam.bsky.social

Facts😎

⏰Two more days to apply! The deadline will not be extended!

Please feel free to share this call with colleagues who might be interested, and we look forward to your contributions!

For additional information, don't hesitate to contact us at text-as-data@uni-potsdam.de

We are delighted to offer financial support for presenters:

🔴 Participation is free for presenters.

🔴We will cover travel and accommodation costs for all presenters.

Text as Data in Behavioral Economics Call for papers

We invite the submission of full papers or extended abstracts from various fields, including economics, social science, psychology, computer science, neuroscience, and related disciplines.

Please submit here until February 15, 2025: sites.google.com/view/text-as...

We are delighted to welcome
@elliottash.bsky.social, Associate Professor of Law, Economics, and Data Science @ethzurich.bsky.social, as our keynote speaker. He is the Scientific Lead in the Swiss AI Initiative, a @cepr.org Research Affiliate, and an Associate Editor at the Economics Journal.

Text as Data in Behavioral Economics Call for papers

🚨Less than two weeks to go: Apply to the workshop “Text as Data in Behavioral Economics”, aimed at exploring the intersection of text mining techniques and behavioral economics.

📍Potsdam, Germany on 10-11.06.25.
📍Submit here until 15.02.25: sites.google.com/view/text-as...
#EconSky

We invite the submission of full papers or extended abstracts from various fields, including economics, social science, psychology, computer science, neuroscience, and related disciplines.

Please submit here until February 15, 2025: sites.google.com/view/text-as...

We are delighted to welcome @elliottash.bsky.social, Associate Professor of Law, Economics, and Data Science at ETH, as our keynote speaker. Prof. Ash is the Scientific Lead in the Swiss AI Initiative, a CERP Research Affiliate (Political Economy), and an Associate Editor at the Economic Journal.

YouTube video by Tobias Werner Participating in a behavioral experiment with Gemini Live

Just used Gemini Live to participate in a beh. experiment without even reading the instructions or speaking the language.

LLMs acting as participants on platforms like Prolific could pollute data meant to study humans. With OpenAI’s operator model, this issue is growing.

🎥👇
youtu.be/NujyGZSA7Hg

Thanks!

I've decided to stop cross-posting on my X account, so I hope to reunite with many of you here!
#EconSky

It was a gift but maybe @tfwerner.com can tell you!🎁

Unfortunately I'm not sure myself. I got it as a gift 🤷🏼‍♀️

Merry Christmas🎄 #EconSky

Thanks, Ben☺️

Thanks, Stephanie!

#eeac Day 11: @vasilisawerner.bsky.social asks when might communication have negative effects on trust in JMP "Destructive Communication" papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... People who are polarized enough on an issue talk and focus on that issue, trust and trustworthiness can decrease #econsky #econjmp