TY - RPRT AU - Powdthavee, Nattavudh AU - Riyanto, Yohanes E. AU - Zhang, Xiaojie TI - When Transparency Fails: How Altruistic Framing Sustains Demand for Useless Advice Despite Complete Information PY - 2024/Nov/ PB - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) CY - Bonn T2 - IZA Discussion Paper IS - 17484 UR - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp17484 AB - This study examines whether complete transparency about the randomness of prediction-generating processes mitigates the hot hand fallacy and the conditions under which it may fail. In a pre-registered laboratory experiment (N=750), we showed that transparency about the prediction-generating processes reduced individuals' belief in the hot hand of fair coin flip predictions. However, this effect significantly weakened when we shifted from paying to donating for predictions. Participants exposed to streaks of accurate predictions under altruistic framing were more inclined to donate despite knowing the randomness involved. We explore underlying mechanisms and discuss implications for decision-making in economics and finance. KW - gambler's fallacy KW - hot hand KW - full information KW - altruism KW - random streaks KW - karmic investment ER -