One of the most prominent areas of research in psychology concerns understanding people’s preferences. In this paper, we critically examine one of the most used preference elicitation procedures: willingness-to-pay (WTP). Contrary to assumptions that WTP captures personal preferences (i.e.,...

Social behavior is heavily influenced by the perception of the behaviors of others. We consider how perceptions (and misperceptions) of kindness can increase generosity in economic transactions. We investigate how these perceptions alter behavior in a novel a real-life situation which pits...

A field experiment (N=113,047 participants) manipulated two factors in the sale of souvenir photos. First, some customers saw a traditional fixed price, whereas others could pay what they wanted (including $0). Second, approximately half of the customers saw a variation in which half of the...