We test experimentally an explanation of over and under confidence as motivated by (perhaps unconscious) strategic concerns, and find compelling evidence supporting this hypothesis in the behavior of participants who send and respond to others’ statements of confidence about how well they have...

Self-administered rewards are ubiquitous. They serve as incentives for personal accomplishments and are widely recommended to increase personal motivation. We show that in a model with time-inconsistent and reference-dependent preferences, self-rewards can be a credible and effective tool to...

We investigate how different forms of scrutiny affect dishonesty, using Gneezy’s (2005) deception game. We add a third player whose interests are aligned with those of the sender. We find that lying behavior is not sensitive to revealing the sender’s identity to the observer. The option for...

We develop a theory of self-regulation based on goal setting for an agent with present-biased preferences. Preferences are assumed to be reference-dependent and exhibit loss aversion, as in prospect theory. The reference point is determined endogenously as an optimal self-sustaining goal. The...

We analyze a large-stakes prisoner's dilemma game played on a TV show. Players cooperate 40% of the time, demonstrating that social preferences are important; however, cooperation is significantly below the 50% threshold that is required for inequity aversion to sustain cooperation. Women...

This paper analyzes behavior on a TV game show where players' monetary payoffs depend upon an array of factors, including ability in answering questions, perceived cooperativeness and the willingness of other players to choose them. We find a substantial beauty premium and are able to...

Both psychologists and economists have argued that rewards often have hidden costs. One possible reason is that the principal may have incentives to offer higher rewards when she knows the task to be dificult. Our experiment tests if high rewards embody such bad news and if this is perceived by...

This paper studies the use of discretionary rewards in a finitely repeated principal-agent relationship with moral hazard. We show that the principal, when she obtains a private subjective signal about the agent’s performance, may pay discretionary bonuses to provide credible feedback to the...

We examine factors that may contribute to 'overconfidence' in relative ability on an intelligence test. We test experimentally for evidence of self-esteem concerns and instrumental strategic concerns. Errors in Bayesian updating are rare when the information does not involve own relative...