Motivated Errors

In three sets of experiments involving 5,432 subjects, we show that agents make more errors when doing so allows them to justify selfish behavior. We show that errors relating to addition arise when they can help to justify selfishness but are eliminated when selfish motives are removed. In addition, we show that selfish motives can either exacerbate or mitigate errors relating to correlation neglect and anchoring. Our results are consistent with individuals acting confused as a justification for selfish behavior.