This paper provides an argument for the advantage of a preference for identity-consistent behaviour from an evolutionary point of view. Within a stylised model of social interaction, we show that the development of cooperative social norms is greatly facilitated if the agents of the society...

This paper proposes a simple framework to model social preferences in a game theoretic framework which explicitly separates economic incentives from social (context) effects. It is argued that such a perspective makes it easier to analyse contextual effects. Moreover, the framework is used to...

This paper discusses the behavioural e ffects of cognitive dissonance in conjunction with cooperative social norms and highlights their relevance for the interpretation of (non)cooperative behaviour in economic lab experiments. In particular, it is argued that, if subjects are used to...