In most laboratory experiments concerning prosocial behavior subjects are fully informed how their decision influences the payoff of other players. Outside the laboratory, however, individuals typically have to decide without such detailed knowledge. To assess the effect of information...

Choosing between selfish and non-selfish behavior in real life is a repeated decision with var-ying time spans between repetitions. To learn more about the dynamics of altruistic behavior, we use repeated standard dictator experiments. The dynamics of prosocial behavior in these experiments...

It has been argued that guilt aversion (the aversion to violate others' expectations) and the compliance to descriptive social norms (the aversion to act differently than others in the same situation) are important drivers of human behavior. We show in a formal model that both motives are...

Do groups and individuals behave differently in dictator games with varying deservingness of the recipient? Does the involvement in group-decision making affect the decisions of group members in subsequent individual decisions? We address these questions using a controlled dictator-game...

In prosocial decisions, decision-makers are inherently uncertain about how their decisions impact others’ utility – we call this interpersonal uncertainty. We show that people’s response to interpersonal uncertainty shapes well-known patterns of prosocial behavior. First, using standard...

We experimentally test overconfidence in investment decisions by offering participants the possibility to substitute their own for alternative investment choices. Overall, 149 subjects participated in two experiments, one with just one risky asset, the other with two risky assets. Overconfidence...

We study experimentally the protection of property in five widely distinct countries- Austria, Mexico, Mongolia, South Korea and the United States. Our main results are that the security of property varies with experimental institutions, and that our subject pools exhibit significantly different...

Qualitative self-assessments of economic preferences have recently gained popularity, often supported by experimental validation, a method that links them to choices in incentivized elicitations. We illustrate theoretically that experimental validation may fail to produce reliable new measures....

We study strategic interaction in an experimental social-preferences vacuum chamber. We mute social preferences by letting participants knowingly interact with computers. Our new design allows for indirect strategic interaction: there are several waves in which computer players inherit the...

People's fairness preferences are an important constraint for what constitutes an acceptable economic transaction, yet little is known about how these preferences are formed. In this paper, we provide clean evidence that contrast effects arising from previous transactions play an important role...