Trust and its complement, trustworthiness, are key concepts in political science. Trust is seen as critical for the existence of stable political institutions, as well as for the formation of social capital and civic engagement (Putnam 1993, 2000; Stolle 1998). It also serves as a social lubricant...

Time preference is a fundamental component of many economic models and questions of interest. Yet, elicited preferences are frequently questioned on the grounds of potentially confounding elements of the experimental design, such as trust in the experimenter. We report on a time preference...

Many economists and biologists view cooperation as anomalous: animals (including humans) that pursue their own self-interest have superior survival odds to their altruistic or cooperative neighbors. However, in many situations there are substantial gains to the group that can achieve cooperation...

The ultimatum game is a standard instrument for laboratory experimentalists. It had been replicated in a large number of environments and points to special considerations for fairness. Although it has been popular in the experimental community, researchers have not harnessed all the statistical...

The Nash equilibrium predictions of standard game theory often fail in experimental test. While innumerable refinements to Nash equilibrium have been suggested, they too fail in empirical tests. What seems apparent is that humans rely on a rich mixture of contextual cues and signals to determine...

This research examines one mechanism by which people decide whether to trust strangers. Using a laboratory setting that provides subjects with controlled information about their counterparts, we test whether attractive subjects gain a “beauty premium” in a game involving trust and...