Professor SIMON GAECHTER's Outputs (40)

The contractual dispute resolution game: Real-effort experiments on contract negotiation and arbitration (2025)
Journal Article
Corgnet, B., Gächter, S., & Hernán-González, R. (2025). The contractual dispute resolution game: Real-effort experiments on contract negotiation and arbitration. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 231, Article 106902. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2025.106902

In many contractual arrangements where product or service delivery occurs sometime after contracts have been concluded, conditions may change, leading to disputes that need to be resolved often by a third party (arbitrator/mediator). In this paper we... Read More about The contractual dispute resolution game: Real-effort experiments on contract negotiation and arbitration.

Wherefore art thou competitors? How situational affordances help differentiate among prosociality, individualism, and competition (2024)
Journal Article
Liu, Y., Stivers, A. W., Murphy, R. O., Van Doesum, N. J., Joireman, J., Gallucci, M., Aharonov-Majar, E., Athenstaedt, U., Bai, L., Böhm, R., Buchan, N. R., Chen, X.-P., Dumont, K. B., Engelmann, J. B., Eriksson, K., Euh, H., Fiedler, S., Friesen, J., Gächter, S., Garcia, C., …Van Lange, P. A. M. (2024). Wherefore art thou competitors? How situational affordances help differentiate among prosociality, individualism, and competition. European Journal of Personality, https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070241298850

The Triple Dominance Measure (choosing between prosocial, individualistic, and competitive options) and the Slider Measure (“sliding” between various orientations, for example, from individualistic to prosocial) are two widely used techniques to meas... Read More about Wherefore art thou competitors? How situational affordances help differentiate among prosociality, individualism, and competition.

Social preferences and the variability of conditional cooperation (2024)
Journal Article
Baader, M., Gächter, S., Lee, K., & Sefton, M. (2024). Social preferences and the variability of conditional cooperation. Economic Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-024-01617-1

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.

Social norms: Enforcement, breakdown & polarization (2024)
Journal Article
Balafoutas, L., Dimant, E., Gächter, S., & Krupka, E. (2024). Social norms: Enforcement, breakdown & polarization. European Economic Review, 170, Article 104885. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104885

The collection of scientific contributions in this special issue explores the role of social norms in guiding collective behavior and the complexities of enforcing these norms in polarized contexts. It examines how norms, while fostering social cohes... Read More about Social norms: Enforcement, breakdown & polarization.

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.-H., 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., Au, W. T., Bai, L., Böhm, R., Bovina, I., Buchan, N. R., Chen, X.-P., Dumont, K. B., Engelmann, J. B., Eriksson, K., Euh, H., Fiedler, S., Friesen, J., Gächter, S., Garcia, C., …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.

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.

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., Bai, L., Böhm, R., Bovina, I., Buchan, N. R., Chen, X.-P., Dumont, K. B., Engelmann, J. B., Eriksson, K., Euh, H., Fiedler, S., Friesen, J., Gächter, S., Garcia, C., González, R., …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.

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.

LIONESS Lab: a free web-based platform for conducting interactive experiments online (2020)
Journal Article
Giamattei, M., Yahosseini, K. S., Gächter, S., & Molleman, L. (2020). LIONESS Lab: a free web-based platform for conducting interactive experiments online. Journal- Economic Science Association, 6, 95–111. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40881-020-00087-0

LIONESS Lab is a free web-based platform for interactive online experiments. An intuitive, user-friendly graphical interface enables researchers to develop, test, and share experiments online, with minimal need for programming experience. LIONESS Lab... Read More about LIONESS Lab: a free web-based platform for conducting interactive experiments online.

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.