In reciprocal interactions, both genuine kindness and self-interested material gain may motivate socially beneficial actions. The paper presents results from two experiments that distinguish the role of perceived motives in reciprocal decision making from the role of outcomes or perceived...

Both theory and recent empirical evidence on nudging suggest that observability of behavior acts as an instrument for promoting (discouraging) pro-social (anti-social) behavior. Our study questions the universality of these claims. We employ a novel four-party setup to disentangle the roles that...

Value Surveys may reveal well-behaved societies by the statistical treatment of the agents' declarations of compliance with social values. Similarly, the results of experiments conducted on games with conflict of interest trace back to two important primitives of social capital - trust and...

We examine under what conditions people provide accurate feedback to others. We use feedback regarding attractiveness, a trait people care about, and for which objective information is hard to obtain. Our results show that people avoid giving accurate face-to-face feedback to less attractive...

People often conform to others either pro-socially or self-interestedly. By conducting modified dictator game experiments where subjects observe others’ behaviors, this study analyzes how observational learning influences subjects’ conforming/non-conforming and pro-social/self-interested...