10 December 2026 16:00 - 17:00

This event is both online and in person.

SAL 2.04, 2nd Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH

Online participants are welcome to join us via Zoom:
Please contact Lia Bergin (Communications and Events Assistant) l.bergin@lse.ac.uk to receive event updates and the Zoom link to the seminar.

About this event

People often make important choices in pursuit of higher income, but do they place too much weight on income when deciding what path to take? We propose a simple model of misspecified learning in which individuals overestimate the marginal satisfaction from income?the expected effect of an income increase on overall life satisfaction? and therefore give income too much importance in their decisions. Guided by this model, we designed a pre-registered experiment that elicits beliefs about the marginal satisfaction from income and randomly assigns scientific evidence about it. Respondents report beliefs about the marginal satisfaction from income that are substantially above the scientific-evidence benchmark, both for themselves and for others, with a larger gap for themselves. These gaps shrink when respondents are exposed to scientific evidence, and the effects persist one month later. To study whether these beliefs matter for behavior, we measure income-versus-non-income trade-offs using job-choice scenarios tailored to each respondent and a real-world decision the respondent is facing. To elicit the latter, we make a methodological contribution: an AI-led interview method that moves beyond static, predefined survey instruments by combining the flexibility of qualitative interviewing with the discipline of closed-ended survey measurement. We find that these beliefs are consequential: after learning that income matters less for life satisfaction than they initially thought, respondents place less weight on income in their decisions.

Participants are expected to adhere to the CEP Events Code of Conduct.

Directions

This event will take place in SAL 2.04, 2nd Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH.

Online participants are welcome to join us via Zoom:
Please contact Lia Bergin (Communications and Events Assistant) l.bergin@lse.ac.uk to receive event updates and the Zoom link to the seminar.

The building is labelled SAL on the LSE campus map. You can also find us on Google Maps. For further information, go to contact us.

This series is part of the CEP's Wellbeing programme.