Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

All Outputs (35)

Social Preferences and the Variability of Conditional Cooperation (2024)
Journal Article
Baader, M., Gächter, S., Lee, K., & Sefton, M. (in press). Social Preferences and the Variability of Conditional Cooperation. Economic Theory,

We experimentally examine how incentives affect conditional cooperation (i.e., cooperating in response to cooperation and defecting in response to defection) in social dilemmas. In our first study, subjects play eight Sequential Prisoner's Dilemma ga... Read More about Social Preferences and the Variability of Conditional Cooperation.

How to activate threat perceptions in behavior research: A simple technique for inducing health and resource scarcity threats (2024)
Journal Article
Isler, O., Yilmaz, O., Maule, A. J., & Gächter, S. (2024). How to activate threat perceptions in behavior research: A simple technique for inducing health and resource scarcity threats. Behavior Research Methods, 56, 8379-8395. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-024-02481-6

Understanding our cognitive and behavioral reactions to large-scale collective problems involving health and resource scarcity threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, helps us be better prepared for future collective threats. However, existing studie... Read More about How to activate threat perceptions in behavior research: A simple technique for inducing health and resource scarcity threats.

The role of payoff parameters for cooperation in the one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma (2024)
Journal Article
Gächter, S., Lee, K., Sefton, M., & Weber, T. O. (2024). The role of payoff parameters for cooperation in the one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma. European Economic Review, 166, Article 104753. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104753

The Prisoner's Dilemma is arguably the most important model of social dilemmas, but our knowledge about how its material payoff structure affects cooperation is incomplete. We investigate the effect of variation in material payoffs on cooperation in... Read More about The role of payoff parameters for cooperation in the one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma.

Introducing IOS11 as an extended interactive version of the ‘Inclusion of Other in the Self’ scale to estimate relationship closeness (2024)
Journal Article
Baader, M., Starmer, C., Tufano, F., & Gächter, S. (2024). Introducing IOS11 as an extended interactive version of the ‘Inclusion of Other in the Self’ scale to estimate relationship closeness. Scientific Reports, 14(1), Article 8901. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-58042-6

The study of relationship closeness has a long history in psychology and is currently expanding across the social sciences, including economics. Estimating relationship closeness requires appropriate tools. Here, we introduce and test a tool for esti... Read More about Introducing IOS11 as an extended interactive version of the ‘Inclusion of Other in the Self’ scale to estimate relationship closeness.

The behavioral mechanisms of voluntary cooperation across culturally diverse societies: Evidence from the US, the UK, Morocco, and Turkey (2023)
Journal Article
Weber, T. O., Schulz, J. F., Beranek, B., Lambarraa-Lehnhardt, F., & Gächter, S. (2023). The behavioral mechanisms of voluntary cooperation across culturally diverse societies: Evidence from the US, the UK, Morocco, and Turkey. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 215, 134-152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.09.006

We examine the role of cooperative preferences, beliefs, and punishments to uncover potential cross-societal differences in voluntary cooperation. Using one-shot public goods experiments in four comparable subject pools from the US and the UK (two si... Read More about The behavioral mechanisms of voluntary cooperation across culturally diverse societies: Evidence from the US, the UK, Morocco, and Turkey.

Who discriminates? Evidence from a trust game experiment across three societies (2023)
Journal Article
Chuah, S., Gächter, S., Hoffmann, R., & Tan, J. H. W. (2023). Who discriminates? Evidence from a trust game experiment across three societies. Journal of Economic Psychology, 97, Article 102630. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2023.102630

What personal characteristics are associated with the extent to which individuals discriminate against particular groups? We use an incentive-compatible measure of an individual's tendency to discriminate on others’ different social identities that t... Read More about Who discriminates? Evidence from a trust game experiment across three societies.

Measuring “Group Cohesion” to Reveal the Power of Social Relationships in Team Production (2023)
Journal Article
Gächter, S., Starmer, C., & Tufano, F. (2023). Measuring “Group Cohesion” to Reveal the Power of Social Relationships in Team Production. Review of Economics and Statistics, 1-45. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01283

We introduce "group cohesion" to study the economic relevance of social relationships in team production. We operationalize measurement of group cohesion, adapting the "oneness scale" from psychology. A series of experiments, including a pre-register... Read More about Measuring “Group Cohesion” to Reveal the Power of Social Relationships in Team Production.

Preferences and Perceptions in Provision and Maintenance Public Goods (2022)
Journal Article
Gächter, S., Kölle, F., & Quercia, S. (2022). Preferences and Perceptions in Provision and Maintenance Public Goods. Games and Economic Behavior, 135, 338-355. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2022.06.009

We study two generic versions of public goods problems: in Provision problems, the public good does not exist initially and needs to be provided; in Maintenance problems, the public good already exists and needs to be maintained. In four lab and onli... Read More about Preferences and Perceptions in Provision and Maintenance Public Goods.

Social closeness can help, harm and be irrelevant in solving pure coordination problems (2022)
Journal Article
Gächter, S., Starmer, C., Thöni, C., Tufano, F., & Weber, T. O. (2022). Social closeness can help, harm and be irrelevant in solving pure coordination problems. Economics Letters, 216, Article 110552. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2022.110552

Experimental research has shown that ordinary people often perform remarkably well in solving coordination games that involve no conflicts of interest. While most experiments in the past studied such coordination games among socially distant anonymou... Read More about Social closeness can help, harm and be irrelevant in solving pure coordination problems.

Reply to Nielsen et al.: Social mindfulness is associated with countries’ environmental performance and individual environmental concern (2022)
Journal Article
van Lange, P. A., Van Doesum, N. J., Murphy, R. O., Gallucci, M., Aharonov-Majar, E., Athenstaedt, U., …Van Lange, P. A. M. (2022). Reply to Nielsen et al.: Social mindfulness is associated with countries’ environmental performance and individual environmental concern. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(9), 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2122077119

Conforming with peers in honesty and cooperation (2022)
Journal Article
Isler, O., & Gächter, S. (2022). Conforming with peers in honesty and cooperation. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 195, 75-86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.12.026

Peer observation can influence social norm perceptions as well as behavior in various moral domains, but is the tendency to be influenced by and conform with peers domain-general? In an online experiment (N = 815), we studied peer effects in honesty... Read More about Conforming with peers in honesty and cooperation.

Social proximity and the erosion of norm compliance (2021)
Journal Article
Bicchieri, C., Dimant, E., Gächter, S., & Nosenzo, D. (2022). Social proximity and the erosion of norm compliance. Games and Economic Behavior, 132, 59-72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2021.11.012

We study how compliance with norms of pro-social behavior is influenced by peers' compliance in a dynamic and non-strategic experimental setting. We show that social proximity among peers is a crucial determinant of the effect. Without social proximi... Read More about Social proximity and the erosion of norm compliance.

Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe (2021)
Journal Article
Van Doesum, N. J., Murphy, R. O., Gallucci, M., Aharonov-Majar, E., Athenstaedt, U., Au, W. T., …Van Lange, P. A. M. (2021). Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(35), Article e2023846118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023846118

Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one’s location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exis... Read More about Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe.

Individual-level loss aversion in riskless and risky choices (2021)
Journal Article
Gächter, S., Johnson, E. J., & Herrmann, A. (2022). Individual-level loss aversion in riskless and risky choices. Theory and Decision, 92(3-4), 599-624. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-021-09839-8

Loss aversion can occur in riskless and risky choices. We present novel evidence on both in a non-student sample (660 randomly selected customers of a car manufacturer). We measure loss aversion in riskless choice in endowment effect experiments with... Read More about Individual-level loss aversion in riskless and risky choices.

Contextualised strong reciprocity explains selfless cooperation despite selfish intuitions and weak social heuristics (2021)
Journal Article
Isler, O., Gächter, S., Maule, A. J., & Starmer, C. (2021). Contextualised strong reciprocity explains selfless cooperation despite selfish intuitions and weak social heuristics. Scientific Reports, 11(1), Article 13868. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93412-4

Humans frequently cooperate for collective benefit, even in one-shot social dilemmas. This provides a challenge for theories of cooperation. Two views focus on intuitions but offer conflicting explanations. The Social Heuristics Hypothesis argues tha... Read More about Contextualised strong reciprocity explains selfless cooperation despite selfish intuitions and weak social heuristics.

Moderating Loss Aversion: Loss Aversion Has Moderators, But Reports of its Death are Greatly Exaggerated (2019)
Journal Article
Herrmann, A., Mrkva, K., Gächter, S., & Johnson, E. J. (2020). Moderating Loss Aversion: Loss Aversion Has Moderators, But Reports of its Death are Greatly Exaggerated. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 30(3), 407-428. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1156

Loss aversion, the principle that losses impact decision making more than equivalent gains, is a fundamental idea in consumer behavior and decision making, though its existence has recently been called into question. Across five unique samples (Ntota... Read More about Moderating Loss Aversion: Loss Aversion Has Moderators, But Reports of its Death are Greatly Exaggerated.

People prefer coordinated punishment in cooperative interactions (2019)
Journal Article
Molleman, L., Kölle, F., Starmer, C., & Gächter, S. (2019). People prefer coordinated punishment in cooperative interactions. Nature Human Behaviour, 3, 1145–1153. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0707-2

Human groups can often maintain high levels of cooperation despite the threat of exploitation by individuals who reap the benefits of cooperation without contributing to its costs1,2,3,4. Prominent theoretical models suggest that cooperation is parti... Read More about People prefer coordinated punishment in cooperative interactions.

Leaders as role models and ‘belief managers’ in social dilemmas (2018)
Journal Article
Gächter, S., & Renner, E. (2018). Leaders as role models and ‘belief managers’ in social dilemmas. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 154, 321-334. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2018.08.001

We investigate the link between leadership, beliefs and pro-social behavior in social dilemmas. This link is interesting because field evidence suggests that people's behavior in domains like charitable giving, tax evasion, corporate culture and corr... Read More about Leaders as role models and ‘belief managers’ in social dilemmas.

Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment (2018)
Journal Article
Weber, T. O., Weisel, O., & Gächter, S. (2018). Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment. Nature Communications, 9(1), Article 2390. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04775-8

Strong reciprocity explains prosocial cooperation by the presence of individuals who incur costs to help those who helped them (‘strong positive reciprocity’) and to punish those who wronged them (‘strong negative reciprocity’). Theories of social pr... Read More about Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment.

Societal background influences social learning in cooperative decision making (2018)
Journal Article
Molleman, L., & Gaechter, S. (2018). Societal background influences social learning in cooperative decision making. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(5), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.05.007

Humans owe their ecological success to their great capacities for social learning and cooperation: learning from others helps individuals adjust to their environment and can promote cooperation in groups. Classic and recent studies indicate that the... Read More about Societal background influences social learning in cooperative decision making.