Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
Ambiguous language is ubiquitous and often deliberate. Recent theoretical work (Bose and Renou, 2014; Kellner and Le Quement, 2018; Beauchêne et al., 2019) has shown how language ambiguation can improve outcomes by mitigating conflict of interest. Our experiment finds a significant effect of language ambiguation on subjects who are proficient at Bayesian updating. For ambiguity averse subjects within this population, a significant part of this effect operates via the channel of subjects' desire to reduce ambiguity. For both ambiguity averse and neutral subjects within this population, an additional behavioral channel is also present.