An active area of research within economics concerns the underpinnings of why people give to charitable causes. This study takes a new approach to this question by exploring motivations for giving among children aged 3–5. Using data gathered from 122 children, our artefactual field experiment...

It is standard in experimental economics to use decontextualized designs where payoff structures are presented using neutral language. Here we show that cooperation in such a neutrally framed Prisoner’s Dilemma is equivalent to a PD framed as contributing to a cooperative endeavour....

Could altruism explain observed choices in the standard trust game? With dominant altruism, trustors would give more to poor trustees. However, we find trustors to give no more to poor than to rich trustees, confirming trust as the dominant motivation for “trust like” choices.

Abstract This study presents results of the validation of an ultra-short survey measure of patience included in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Survey responses predict intertemporal choice behavior in incentive-compatible decisions in a representative sample of the German adult population.

We test experimentally a prediction of the ‘moral credit model’, in which committing a virtuous act creates moral credits that can license immoral behavior in a succeeding decision. We use a basic cheating experiment that was either preceded by a virtuous deed or not in a developing country...

How do people react to a mix of good deeds to a third party and bad deeds against them? A modified ultimatum game shows that previous good deeds make responders substantially more tolerant to unfair proposals.

The overconfidence bias is discussed extensively in economic studies, yet fails to hold experimentally once monetary incentives and feedback are implemented. We consider overconfidence as a social bias. For a simple real effort task, we show that, individually, economic conditions effectively...

Is it possible to elicit reliable assessment from an assessor having a conflict of interest (e.g. a professor that writes a recommendation letter for a formal PhD student)? We propose an experimental test and show that compared to a not-incentivized assessment, a promise to give a truthful...

In three binary choice problems, people reveal a choice pattern which falsifies expected utility theory and many generalized non-expected utility theories. This new paradox challenges popular non-expected utility models analogously to how the Allais paradox challenged neoclassical expected...

This paper experimentally investigates the nature of impulses in impulse learning. Particularly, we analyze whether positive feedback (i.e., yielding a superior payoff in a game) or negative feedback (i.e., yielding an inferior payoff in a game) leads to a systematic change in the individual...