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...

We explain contributions in public goods games with the help of the reciprocity model of Dufwenberg and Kirchsteiger (2004) by applying some plausible modifications: Most importantly, we assume that subjects overestimate the kindness of their group members. In combination with the finding that...

In experimental games, a substantial minority of players often fail to best respond. Using two-person 3x3 one-shot games, we investigate whether ‘structuring' the pre-decision deliberation process produces greater consistency between individuals' stated values and beliefs on the one hand and...

This paper proposes Thompson Sampling as a unifying and tractable theory of expectation formation, which is in line with theories of the brain. Thompson Sampling means that in uncertain environments, agents update their beliefs in a Bayesian way, and subsequently make a random draw from the...

In experimental games, a substantial minority of players often fail to best respond. Using two-person 3x3 one-shot games, we investigated whether 'structuring' the pre-decision deliberation process produces greater consistency between individuals' stated values and beliefs on the one hand and...

In this study, we investigate how and why people discriminate among different groups, including their own groups and multiple out-groups. In a laboratory experiment, we use dictator games for five groups to compare actual transfers to in-group and out-group agents with the respective beliefs...

In a pre-registered laboratory asset market study, we investigate dynamics of asset markets with zero (or close to zero) fundamental values. We introduce the "greater fool asset market game" with a zero-value token, whose price doubles in each period. We design several treatments, which differ...

We conduct an experiment in which we elicit subjects’ beliefs over opponents’ behavior multiple times for a given game without feedback. We find that the large majority of individual subjects have stochastic belief reports, which we argue cannot be explained by learning or measurement error....

A person is said to be 'trust responsive' if she fulfils trust because she believes the truster trusts her. The experiment we report was designed to test for trust responsiveness and its robustness across payoff structures, and to disentangle it from other possible factors making for...

In games with strategic complementarities, public information about the state of the world has a larger impact on equilibrium actions than private information of the same precision, because public signals are more informative about the likely behavior of others. We present an experiment in which...