Departures from pure self interest in economic experiments have recently inspired models of "social preferences". We conduct experiments on simple two-person and three-person games with binary choices that test these theories more directly than the array of games conventionally considered. Our...

People underappreciate how their own behavior and exogenous factors affect their future utility, and thus exaggerate the degree to which their future preferences resemble their current preferences. We present evidence which demonstrates the prevalence of such projection bias, and develop a...

Departures from self-interest in economic experiments have recently inspired models of "social preferences". We design a range of simple experimental games that test these theories more directly than existing experiments. Our experiments show that subjects are more concerned with increasing...

It is traditional in experimental games to allow participants to choose only actions or possibly communicate intended play. In sequential two-person games, we require first movers to express a preference between responder choices. We find that responder behavior differs substantially according...

This essay provides a perspective on the trend towards integrating psychology into economics. Some topics are discussed, and arguments are provided for why movement towards greater psychological realism in economics will improve mainstream economics.

Experiments with the ultimatum game -- where one party can make a take-it-or-leave-it offer to a second party on how to split a pie -- illustrate that conventional game theory has been wrong in its predictions regarding the simplest of bargaining settings: Even when one party has enormous...