While preferences for conformity are commonly seen as an important driver of pro-social behaviour, only a small set of previous studies has explicitly tested the behavioural mechanisms underlying this proposition. In this paper, we report on two interconnected experimental studies that jointly...

Using coordination games, we study whether social norm perception differs between inexperienced and experienced participants in economic laboratory experiments. We find substantial differences between the two groups, both regarding injunctive and descriptive social norms in the context of...

Can gender-balanced social norms mitigate the gender differences in competitiveness that are observed in traditional patriarchic as well as in modern societies? We experimentally assess men's and women's preferences to compete in a traditional society where women and men have similar rights and...

We study whether social norm perception in economic laboratory experiments differs between subjects that participate for the first time and subjects that already participated many times. Consistent with previous studies, inexperienced subjects pronounce egalitarianism, while experienced subjects...

The research agenda that guides this dissertation is characterized by the three aspects specified in the title. First, all of the projects are experimental investigations. That is, I apply the method of incentivized economic experiments in order to answer research questions through the...

Can gender-balanced social norms mitigate the gender differences in competitiveness that are observed in traditional patriarchic as well as in modern societies? We experimentally assess men's and women's preferences to compete in a traditional society where women and men have similar rights and...

Can gender-balanced social norms mitigate the gender gap in competitiveness that has been documented for modern as well as traditional patriarchic societies? We identify a society in northeast India where women and men have had similar rights and entitlements from time immemorial, to conduct the...

In this paper, we experimentally investigate how sending a signal of following social norms impacts people's cooperative behavior in a repeated public goods game, where we disentangle the effect of strategy and internalization of social norms on cooperation. We find that under the signaling...