Prior research has found that people tend to overestimate their relative contribution to joint tasks [e.g., Ross, M., & Sicoly, F. (1979). Egocentric biases in availability and attribution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 322-336]. The present research investigates one source...

Intuitively, people should cheat more when cheating is more lucrative, but we find that the effect of performance-based pay-rates on dishonesty depends on how readily people can compare their pay-rate to that of others. In Experiment 1, participants were paid 5 cents or 25 cents per...

Recent research finds that people respond more generously to individual victims described in detail than to equivalent statistical victims described in general terms. We propose that this “identified victim effect” is one manifestation of a more general phenomenon: a positive influence of...