The Hazards and Benefits of Condescension in Social Learning

01/26/2023

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by   Itai Arieli, et al.

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In a misspecified social learning setting, agents are condescending if they perceive their peers as having private information that is of lower quality than it is in reality. Applying this to a standard sequential model, we show that outcomes improve when agents are mildly condescending. In contrast, too much condescension leads to bad outcomes, as does anti-condescension.