A prominent finding in the literature on gender competition is that women are less inclined to compete in comparison to men. In this paper, we conduct a laboratory experiment to examine the relevance of beliefs about the sex of potential competitors on men’s and women’s decision to enter...

Since time immemorial, subliminal advertisement has continued to haunt the society and especially after James Vicary's experiment at New Jersey, it reached a new height. Since then, there has been much argument about whether this can be an efficient technique of marketing communications. Decades...

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...

Two studies examine differences in participants' moment-to-moment and retrospective evaluations of an experience depending on whether they are alone or in the presence of another person. Findings for the first study reveal that moment-to-moment evaluations by participants who watched a film clip...

In fractional ownership markets, consumers purchase a share in a property and can later exchange it with other owners through a secondary market. Forward-looking consumers may purchase low quality shares at a low price with the intention of trading up. This poses a serious problem. We show that...

In an experimental setting, we applied a dual strategy to better understand the effect of pictures of eyes on human behavior. First, we investigated whether the effect of eyes was limited to interaction tasks in which the subjects' decisions influenced the outcomes of other subjects. We expanded...

This paper reviews some of the economic experimental evidence on conformism. There is nothing to match the early psychology experiments where subjects were often swayed by the behaviour of others to an extraordinary degree, but there is plenty of evidence of conformism. This seems built-in to...

The thought of one's own death induces anxiety and threatens self-esteem. According to Terror Management Theory, to reduce this existential threat individuals typically embrace their cultural worldview, and seek for an increase in self-esteem and status by improving their productivity. Within an...

This paper reviews some of the economic experimental evidence on conformism. There is nothing to match the early psychology experiments where subjects were often swayed by the behaviour of others to an extraordinary degree, but there is plenty of evidence of conformism. This seems built-in to...

According to the Terror Management Theory, the fear of death may induce anxiety and threaten individual self-esteem. To remove this fear, individuals need to obtain and sustain self-esteem, for example by competing in rank order tournaments, or by focusing on status seeking. Within an...