We study how an individual's compliance with social norms is influenced by other actors' norm compliance. In a repeated non-strategic Take-or-Give donation experiment we show that giving is considered socially appropriate while taking is sociallyinappropriate.Observing norm violations...

Political polarization has ruptured the fabric of U.S. society. The focus of this paper is to examine various layers of (non-)strategic decision-making that are plausibly affected by political polarization through the lens of one's feelings of hate and love for Donald J. Trump. In several...

This paper focuses on belief distortion in the context of lying decisions. We employ a twostage variant of the "dice under the cup" paradigm, in which subjects' beliefs are elicited in stage 1 before performing the dice task in stage 2. In stage 1, we elicit the subjects' beliefs about (i)...

Social norms are ubiquitous in social and economic life but the drivers of norm conformity are poorly understood. We study the specific ways in which others' norm compliance in uences own norm compliance. Our context is a repeated non-strategic Take-or-Give donation experiment in which we show...

We examine framing effects in nudging honesty in the spirit of the growing norm-nudge literature by utilizing a high-powered and pre-registered study. Across four treatments, participants received one random truthful norm-nudge that emphasized 'moral suasion' based on either what other...

We study the interaction between competition and social proximity on altruism, trust, and reciprocity. We decompose the behavioral channels by utilizing variants of both the Trust Game and the Dictator Game in a design that systematically controls the transmission of relevant information. Our...

Economic theory suggests that the deterrence of deviant behavior is driven by a combination of severity and certainty of punishment. This paper presents the first controlled experiment to study a third important factor that has been mainly overlooked: the swiftness of formal sanctions. We...

We study how individuals' compliance with norms of pro-social behavior is influenced by other actors' compliance in a novel, dynamic, and non-strategic experimental setting. We are particularly interested in the role that social proximity among peers plays in eroding or upholding norm...

Research examining the effect of weak 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, which would enable agents to justify selfish behavior. We...

Political polarization has ruptured the fabric of U.S. society. I quantify this phenomenon through the use of 5 pre-registered studies, comprising 15 behavioral experiments and a diverse set of over 8,600 participants. The focus of this paper is to examine various behavioral-, belief-, and...