Are some individuals generally more pro-social than others? If so, socially beneficial commitments could serve as a costly screening device helping the pro-social to match. We present a public good game experiment in which subjects choose between two group types: in blue groups, subjects receive...

We study the impact of cognitive load in dictator games to test two conflicting views of moral behavior. Are social preferences skindeep in the sense that they are the result of humans’ cognitive reasoning while the natural instinct is selfish, or is rather the natural instinct to share fairly...

It has recently been argued that giving is spontaneous while greed is calculated (Rand et al. 2012). If greed is calculated we would expect that cognitive load, which is assumed to reduce the influence of cognitive processes, should affect greed. In this paper we study both charitable giving and...

Are some individuals generally more pro-social than others? If so, socially beneficial commitments could serve as a costly screening device helping the pro-social to match. We present a public good game experiment in which subjects choose between two group types: in blue groups, subjects receive...

We report evidence from a laboratory experiment comparing contributions in public good games played as individuals to contributions made as group representatives. We find that women alter their behaviour more than men. The change is in an out-group friendly direction: while men’s contributions...