Social interactions predominantly take place under the shadow of the future. Previous literature explains cooperation in indefinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma as predominantly driven by self-interested strategic considerations. This paper provides a causal test of the importance of social...

Social interactions predominantly take place under the shadow of the future. Previous literature explains cooperation in indefinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma as predominantly driven by self-interested strategic considerations. This paper provides a causal test of the importance of social...

We had participants play two sets of repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma (RPD) games, one with a large continuation probability and the other with a small continuation probability, as well as Dictator Games (DGs) before and after the RPDs. We find that, regardless of which is RPD set is played first,...

One of the most consistent findings in experimental studies of social dilemmas is the positive influence of face-to-face (FtF) communication on cooperation. The FtF "communication effect" has been recently explained in terms of a "focus theory of norms": successful communication focuses agents...

In many social dilemmas, individuals tend to generate a situation with low payoffs instead of a system optimum (tragedy of the commons). Is the routing of traffic a similar problem? In order to address this question, we present experimental results on humans playing a route choice game in a...

Using a negatively framed public good game, we study the cooperative behavior of individuals who reintegrate their group after being excluded by their peers. We manipulate the length of exclusion and whether this length is imposed exogenously or results from a vote. We show that people are...

Understanding the roots of human cooperation among strangers is of great importance for solving pressing social dilemmas and maintening public goods in human societies. We study the development of cooperation in 929 young children, aged 3 to 6. In a unified experimental framework, we examine...