A stream of research examining the effect of punishment on conformity indicates that punishment can backfire and lead to suboptimal social outcomes. We examine whether this effect is due to a lack of perceived legitimacy of rule enforcement, enabling agents to justify selfish behavior. We...

Norms and nudges are both popular types of interventions. Recent years have seen the rise of `norm-nudges' - nudges whose mechanism of action relies on social norms, providing or eliciting social expectations. Norm-nudges can be powerful interventions, but they can easily fail to be effective...

We study the interaction between competition and social proximity on altruism, trust, and reciprocity, with an emphasis on gender differences. We decompose the behavioral channels by utilizing variants of both the Trust Game and the Dictator Game in a design that systematically controls the...

Achieving successful behavior change via nudging is hard. This is particularly true when choice architects attempt to change behavior that is collectively harmful but individually beneficial. In this paper, we review the state-of-the-art of the behavior change literature to assess both robust...

Achieving successful and long-lasting behavior change via nudging is hard. This is particularly true when choice architects attempt to change behavior that is collectively harmful but individually beneficial. We review the state-of-the-art of the behavior change literature to assess both robust...

Authorities rely on reporting from private citizens to detect and enforce more than a trivial portion of effective law breaking. This article is the first to experimentally study the cultural aspect of peer reporting. By collecting data in a post-Soviet country (Moldova), we focus in particular...

Scientists and policymakers seek to choose effective interventions that promote preventative health measures. We evaluated whether academics, behavioral science practitioners, and laypeople (N = 1,034) were able to forecast the effectiveness of seven different messages compared to a baseline...