The goal of this paper is to draw some lessons for economic theory from research in psychology, social psychology and, more briefly, in biology, which purports to explain the formation of social preferences. We elicit the basic mechanisms whereby a variety of social preferences are determined in...

Many modern organisations collect data on individuals' personality traits as part of their human resource selection processes. We test experimentally whether revealing information on personality data impacts on pro-social behaviour as measured in a one-shot modified dictator game and a public...

Using a series of sender-receiver games, we find that two senders acting together are willing to behave more antisocially towards the receiver than single senders. This result is robust in two contexts: when antisocial messages are dishonest and when they are honest but unfavorable. Our results...

We argue that heroism is typically adaptive everyday ethical behavior taken to the extreme by over-generalization. We discuss three types of ethical principles with the properties of being cooperative, adaptive in the context of everyday life, but not in one's self-interest when taken to the...

Cooperation is central to human societies. Yet relatively little is known about the cognitive underpinnings of cooperative decision-making. Does cooperation require deliberate self-restraint? Or is spontaneous prosociality reined in by calculating self-interest? Here we present a theory of why...

Reciprocity constraints facilitate the achievement of cooperative outcomes in many game-theoretic settings. Yet, in some situations the equilibrium induced by a reciprocity constraint may not be socially optimal. After presenting the case in which reciprocity yields privately and socially...

We test the proposition that individuals may experience a self-control conflict between short-term temptation to be selfish and better judgment to act pro-socially. Using a dictator game and a public goods game, we manipulated the likelihood that individuals identified self-control conflict, and...

Individuals in a social dilemma may experience a self-control conflict between urges to act selfishly and their better judgment to cooperate. Pairing a public goods game with a subtle framing technique, we test whether perception of self-control conflict strengthens the association between...

Recent experimental research has shown that a policy put in place endogenously (i.e., through their votes) can be more effective at inducing cooperation in dilemma situations. This paper shows that a similar result holds when a mild sanction is implemented in a voluntary contribution dilemma....

Many modern organisations collect data on individuals’ personality traits as part of their human resource selection processes. We test experimentally whether revealing information on personality data impacts on pro-social behaviour as measured in a one-shot modified dictator game and a public...