The mathematical framework of psychological game theory is useful for describing many forms of motivation where preferences depend directly on own or others’ beliefs. It allows for incorporating, e.g., emotions, reciprocity, image concerns, and self-esteem in economic analysis. We explain how...

Existing research supports two opposing mechanisms through which positive mood might affect cooperation. Some studies have suggested that positive mood produces more altruistic, open and helpful behavior, fostering cooperation. However, there is contrasting research supporting the idea that...

Anticipating "social risk", or risk caused by humans, affects decision-making differently from anticipating natural risk. Drawing upon a large sample of the US population (n=3,982), we show that the phenomenon generalizes to risk experience. Experiencing adverse outcomes caused by another human...

In order to decrease social distance and increase trust on their platforms, many online marketplaces allow traders to be represented by profile pictures or avatars. In a laboratory experiment, we investigate whether the presence of seller avatars affects trading behavior in a market. We contrast...

Using a dictator game experiment, we examine whether the introduction of group identities affects giving. Group identities can activate feelings of in-group love and out-group hate to create an in-group bias. In addition, group identities may spawn social sanctions that are designed to reinforce...

We explore the influence of cognitive ability and judgment on strategic behavior in the beauty contest game (where the Nash equilibrium action is zero). Using the level-k model of bounded rationality, cognitive ability and judgment both predict higher level strategic thinking. However,...

The main insight of this paper is that moral behavior does not necessarily alleviate coordination problems or may even worsen them, if individuals possess different degrees of morality. We characterize heterogenous Alger-Weibull morality preferences in a canonical model of voluntary...

Is the behavior of people consistent with the predictions of the Nash equilibrium and, in particular, the Minimax hypothesis? The existing literature have not reached a consensus about the answer to this question. This paper studies whether the soccer players involved in a penalty kick behave...

This paper considers finitely repeated games played by procedurally rational players, who sample their available alternatives and use realized payoffs as a basis for strategy selection. The corresponding solution concept is that of (payoff) sampling equilibrium, which is a distribution over...

While a game-theoretic tree is an unrivaled way of representing dynamic interactions, no real-life interaction comes with its tree representation. Before backward inducting, players must construct a tree. We test whether people correctly construct trees. Replicated in 27 different settings with...