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In this paper, we use choice architecture techniques to activate both social and personal norms, seeking to increase pro-environmental choices and to better understand the effect of such norm types on post-choice emotional responses. In four experiments, we make different social or personal norms salient by aligning choice environments with psychosocial mechanisms that activate different types of norms. We use different choice architecture techniques to change information, alter product sets, and generate the social consequences of choices. The target behavior, purchasing a recycled paper notebook, is captured through direct purchase behaviors or willingness to pay commitments. We find that choice architecture activates personal but not social norms, and that associated positive and negative emotions (guilt, shame, regret and pride) are elicited by choices but not by willingness to pay. Moreover, manipulating choice environment moderates the relationship between choice and norm-related emotions, such that positive emotional responses seem to be stronger than negative ones. The results suggest that choice architecture interventions can activate individual level beliefs about sustainability and help reduce the attitude-behavior gap.

This paper investigates experimentally the relationship between inequality in endowment and deception. Our basic design is adopted from Gneezy (2005): two players interact in a deception game. It is common knowledge that player 1 has private information about the payoffs for both players of two alternative actions. Player 1 sends a message to player 2, indicating which alternative putatively will end up in a higher payoff for player 2. The message, which can either be true or false, does not affect the payoffs of the players. Player 2 has no information about the payoffs. However, player 2 selects one of the two alternatives A or B, which is payoff-relevant for both players. Our paper adds value to the literature by extending Gneezy (2005) in two ways. First, we systematically vary the initial endowment of players 1 and 2 (common knowledge to both of them). Second, we do not limit ourselves to the standard population of university students but also recruit chess players that are not enrolled in any degree program. Doing so, we want to find out if our results remain robust over a non-standard subject population which is known to be experienced to some extent in strategic interactions. Our main findings are: (i) non-students behave more honestly than students, (ii) students are more likely to trust the opponent’s message, and (iii) students and non-students behave differently to variation in initial endowment.

Motivated by the two-decade-long scientific debate over the existence of the ego-depletion effect, our paper contributes to exploring the scope conditions of ego-depletion theory. Specifically, in a randomized experiment, we depleted students’ self-control with a cognitively demanding task that required students’ effort. We measured the effect of depleted self-control on a subsequent task that required self-control to not engage in fraudulent cheating behavior—measured with an incentivized dice-roll task—and tested ego-depletion in a large-scale preregistered field experiment that was similar to real-life situations. We hypothesized that treated students would cheat more. The data confirms the hypothesis and provides causal evidence of the ego-depletion effect. Our results provide new insights into the scope conditions of ego-depletion theory, contribute methodological information for future research, and offer practical guidance for educational policy.

Some evidence suggests that people behave more cooperatively and generously when observed or in the presence of images of eyes (termed the ‘watching eyes’ effect). Eye images are thought to trigger feelings of observation, which in turn motivate people to behave more cooperatively to earn a good reputation. However, several recent studies have failed to find evidence of the eyes effect. One possibility is that inconsistent evidence in support of the eyes effect is a product of individual differences in sensitivity or susceptibility to the cue. In fact, some evidence suggests that people who are generally more prosocial are less susceptible to situation-specific reputation-based cues of observation. In this paper, we sought to (1) replicate the eyes effect, (2) replicate the past finding that people who are dispositionally less prosocial are more responsive to observation than people who are more dispositionally more prosocial, and (3) determine if this effect extends to the watching eyes effect. Results from a pre-registered study showed that people did not give more money in a dictator game when decisions were made public or in the presence of eye images, even though participants felt more observed when decisions were public. That is, we failed to replicate the eyes effect and observation effect. An initial, but underpowered, interaction model suggests that egoists give less than prosocials in private, but not public, conditions. This suggests a direction for future research investigating if and how individual differences in prosociality influence observation effects.

Using an incentivized experiment with statistical power, this paper explores the role of stakes in charitable giving of lottery prizes, where subjects commit to donate a fraction of the prize before they learn the outcome of the lottery. We study three stake levels: 5€ (n = 177), 100€ (n = 168), and 1,000€ (n = 171). Although the donations increase in absolute terms as the stakes increase, subjects decrease the donated fraction of the pie. However, people still share roughly 20% of 1,000€, an amount as high as the average monthly salary of people at the age of our subjects. The number of people sharing 50% of the pie is remarkably stable across stakes, but donating the the whole pie–the modal behavior in charity-donation experiments–disappears with stakes. Such hyper-altruistic behavior thus seems to be an artifact of the stakes typically employed in economic and psychological experiments. Our findings point out that sharing with others is a prevalent human feature, but stakes are an important determinant of sharing. Policies promoted via prosocial frames (e.g., stressing the effects of mask-wearing or social distancing on others during the Covid-19 pandemic or environmentally-friendly behaviors on future generations) may thus be miscalibrated if they disregard the stakes at play.

Data and statistical codes for the paper "Empathy: A clue for prosocialty and driver of indirect reciprocity" by Frauke von Bieberstein, Andrea Essl, and Kathrin Friedrich. Abstract Indirect reciprocity has been proposed to explain prosocial behavior among strangers, whereby the prosocial act is returned by a third party. However, what happens if the prosocial act cannot be observed by the third party? Here, we examine whether empathy serves as a clue for prosociality and whether people are more generous toward more empathetic people. In a laboratory study, we measured prosocial behavior as the amount sent in the dictator game and empathy based on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). By using an incentivized task, we find that people believe that more empathetic participants send more money in the dictator game. Thus, people see empathy as a clue for prosocial behavior. Furthermore, in a second dictator game, participants indirectly reciprocate by sending more money to more empathetic recipients. Therefore, we suggest that empathy can replace a reputation derived from observable prosocial behavior in triggering indirect reciprocity.

Most studies on motivation to work concentrate on its environmental and situational antecedents. Individual values are not the point of interest of empirical analyses. The aim of the research described in the paper was to seek possible relationships between work ethic and motivation to work. A hypothesis was put forward that work ethic, in the classical Weberian approach, is connected with motivation to work, from the point of view of Ryan’s and Deci’s self-determination theory. The study on a sample of 405 Polish employees was conducted with use of the Polish version ofMultidimensional Work Ethic ProfileMWEP-PL andWork Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Scale, in the Polish adaptation WEIMS-PL. The Canonical Correlation Analysis was used to assess the simultaneous interrelationships between two sets of the variables measured. The results show that selected dimensions of work ethic, such as centrality of work, valuing hard work, perceiving work as an obligation, anti-leisure sentiment and delay of gratification are positively related to autonomous dimensions of motivation: intrinsic motivation, integration and identification, and non-autonomous introjection. Attributing a high value to hard work, including the conviction that it leads to success, aversion to wasting time and self-reliance correlate positively with taking up work for extrinsic rewards and with the desire to acquire a positive opinion about oneself as well as gain approval and recognition from others. Work ethic is connected on the one hand with autonomous motivation, including in particular intrinsic motivation, and on the other hand with extrinsic motivation, with the striving for success, which is the result of work. After empirical verification the findings could become a base for training programs and shape the way of influencing people’s motivation, morale, attitude towards work and job satisfaction. They can result in the way employees are managed and selected for different tasks.

International audience; Communication policies employed by policymakers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) often appeal to the emotions to persuade people to adopt virtuous behavior. The aim of this paper is to study the impact of induced emotions on pro-environmental behavior (PEB). We design a three-stage laboratory experiment. In the first stage, we determine the level of the subjects’ environmental awareness. In the second stage, subjects read scripts that place them in realistic hypothetical scenarios designed to induce specific emotions. We implement a 2 x 2 in-between design by varying both the valence and social dimension of the four emotional states induced: happiness, sadness, pride and shame. In the third stage, subjects play a modified dictator game in which the recipient is an environmental non-governmental organization (ENGO). We show that the emotional states of subjects can influence PEB. In particular, negative emotions significantly reduce the average individual amount of donations made to ENGOs. We also find that the precise impact of the emotional states is more complex and appears to be dependent on individuals’ characteristics and awareness for environmental issues. For instance, in positive emotional states, men donate significantly less than women. In addition, a high level of environmental awareness increases donations in subjects experiencing shame and decreases their likelihood to donate when feeling pride. Also, we observe behavioral consistency for negative emotions and rather compensatory behavior for positive emotions.

Based on a meta-analysis, this paper highlights the strength and relevance of several social incentive factors concerning pro-environmental behaviors, including social influence, network factors (like network size, network connection and leadership), trust in others, and trust in institutions. Firstly, our results suggest that social influence is necessary for the emergence of pro-environmental behaviors. More specifically, an internal social influence (i.e., motivating people to change their perceptions and attitudes) is essential to promote pro-environmental behaviors. Secondly, network connection encourages pro-environmental behaviors, meaning that the effectiveness of a conservation policy can be improved if connections among individuals are increased. Finally, trust in institutions can dictate individual behaviors to shape policy design and generate desired policy outcomes.

In daily life, some people are always seen dedicating available resources to support collective activities. In this paper, we call these people who care group goals more than individual goals dedicators. Inspired by this phenomenon, we studied the role of dedicators on the evolution of cooperation in public goods game (PGG) based on a Chinese Folk Spring Festival Gala. Three types of agents were introduced into our PGG model including cooperators, defectors and dedicators. Dedicators tried to donate when the Gala was short of funds. Cooperators and defectors imitated the strategy of the highest-payoff neighbor based on the rational mechanism. And their imitating probability was modified on account of the emotional mechanism for positive effect of the dedicator’s donating behavior and negative effect of continuous poor performance. Through numerical simulations, we found that the existence of dedicators can indeed promote cooperation in PGG. It should be noted that dedicators’ willingness to donate was more important than their donation quantity in facilitating cooperation. And the stronger the emotional effect intensity of dedicators’ donating behavior was, the better. So, the selfless dedication of participants should be praised to promote cooperation by improving their emotional effect intensity. Last but not least, a reasonable activity budget was needed to sustain the highest level of cooperation.

In this paper we show experimentally that conditional cooperation, a phenomenon described in the private provision of public goods, is also present in group contests, where participants’ contributions to their group performance partially determines if they overcome a rival group. This environment allows us to identify new determinants of conditional cooperation. We observe conditional cooperation in successful groups and in groups where members contribute more than rivals (even if they lose), but it vanishes in those groups that lose the contest due to low group performance. A random-effect linear panel regression analysis with an extensive set of controls confirms the findings.

Objective The Self-Importance of Moral Identity Scale (SMIS) was developed by Aquino and Reeds with the purpose of measuring how people evaluate their private (Internalization subscale) and public (Symbolization subscale) moral identity. SMIS has become commonly and broadly used in many studies. The aim of this paper is to validate the Polish version of SMIS by analyzing its structure and relation to similar measures (such as The Moral Self-Concept Scale developed by Stake and The Moral Self-Image Scale created by Jordan, Leliveld and Tenbrunsel), declared past prosocial behaviors and readiness to donate money. Methods The translation-back-translation procedure was used to maintain semantic, idiomatic, and conceptual equivalence of the original scale. Throughout four separate studies the psychometric properties of the Polish version of the scale were assessed: Study 1 (N = 529) was carried out to derive the factor structure using the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and cross-validate it; Study 2 (N = 602) and Study 3 (N = 899) were performed to confirm and replicate the structure with the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA); gender-balanced Study 4 (N = 862) was conducted to assess measurement invariance over gender using multigroup CFA, and to normalize the scale. Validity of the scale was assessed based on each study. Results A stable two-factor structure using 10 items was replicated in four different samples. The results showed that reliability (α) was between 0.71 and 0.81 for Internalization, and 0.76 and 0.81 for Symbolization. Validity was confirmed in terms of the expected pattern of correlations with morality measures and factorial structure. Metric invariance across gender was confirmed with possible exception of factor loadings on two items regarding communication of values. Polish normalization for men and women was constructed. Conclusions Polish validation of SMIS proved to be a structurally consistent and valid measure.

Current computational models suggest that paranoia may be explained by stronger higher-order beliefs about others and increased sensitivity to environments. However, it is unclear whether this applies to social contexts, and whether it is specific to harmful intent attributions, the live expression of paranoia. We sought to fill this gap by fitting a computational model to data (n = 1754) from a modified serial dictator game, to explore whether pre-existing paranoia could be accounted by specific alterations to cognitive parameters characterising harmful intent attributions. We constructed a ‘Bayesian brain’ model of others’ intent, which we fitted to harmful intent and self-interest attributions made over 18 trials, across three different partners. We found that pre-existing paranoia was associated with greater uncertainty about other’s actions. It moderated the relationship between learning rates and harmful intent attributions, making harmful intent attributions less reliant on prior interactions. Overall, the magnitude of harmful intent attributions was directly related to their uncertainty, and importantly, the opposite was true for self-interest attributions. Our results explain how pre-existing paranoia may be the result of an increased need to attend to immediate experiences in determining intentional threat, at the expense of what is already known, and more broadly, they suggest that environments that induce greater probabilities of harmful intent attributions may also induce states of uncertainty, potentially as an adaptive mechanism to better detect threatening others. Importantly, we suggest that if paranoia were able to be explained exclusively by core domain-general alterations we would not observe differential parameter estimates underlying harmful-intent and self-interest attributions., Author summary A great deal of work has tried to explain paranoia through general cognitive principles, although relatively little has tried to understand whether paranoia may be explained by specific changes to social learning processes. This question is crucial, as paranoia is inherently a social phenomenon, and requires mechanistic explanations to match with its dynamic phenomenology. In this paper we wanted to test whether pre-existing and live paranoid beliefs about others specifically altered how an individual attributed harmful intent–the live expression of paranoia–to partners over a series of live interactions. To do this we applied a novel computational model and network analysis to behavioural data from a large sample of participants in the general population that had played a modified Dictator game online, and required them to attribute whether the behaviour of their partner was due to their intent to harm, or their self-interest, on two mutually exclusive scales. Pre-existing paranoid beliefs about others reduced the value of new partner behaviours on evolving attributions of harmful intent. We suggest that both pre-existing paranoid beliefs and momentary paranoia may incur an adaptive cognitive state to better track potentially threatening others, and demonstrate phenomenological specificity associated with mechanisms of live paranoia.

One of the major goals of drug use prevention programs is to delay the age of onset of substance use. What is called early initiation, usually occurring in adolescents under the age of 15, is a salient predictor of Substance Use Disorders later in adulthood. The causes of early initiation are complex and multifaceted and this has led to the identification of a rich set of risk and protective factors that influence age of onset. Nonetheless, there is little knowledge about the interdependence of these factors in their impact on early initiation. This paper addresses this question by applying Multiple Correspondence Analysis to data on family, community and social risk and protective factors from over 1200 adolescents. We find that community and to a lesser extent social factors are the most clearly associated to early initiation and we compare our results to those obtained from linear regression analyses of the same data that do not incorporate interdependence and find opposite results. We discuss the differences between linear regressions and MCA to evaluate the interplay of risk and protective factors and the implications of our findings for health policy and the design of prevention interventions aimed at delaying age of onset.

Advances in digital technology have led to large amounts of personal data being recorded and retained by industry, constituting an invaluable asset to both governmental and private organizations. The implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation in the EU, including the UK, fundamentally reshaped how data is handled across every sector. It enables the general public to access data collected about them by organisations, opening up the possibility of this data being used for research that benefits the public; for example, to uncover lifestyle causes of health outcomes. A significant barrier for using this commercial data for academic research is the lack of publicly acceptable research frameworks. Data donation - an act of active consent of an individual to donate their personal data for research - could enable the use of commercial data for societal benefit. However, it is not clear which motives, if any, would drive people to donate their personal data. In this paper we present the results of a large-scale survey (N = 1,300) that studied intentions and reasons to donate personal data. We found that over half of individuals are willing to donate their personal data for research that could benefit the wider general public. We identified three distinct reasons to donate personal data: an opportunity to achieve self-benefit, prosocial motive to serve society, and the need to understand the purpose of data donation. We developed a questionnaire to measure those three reasons and provided further evidence on the validity of the scales. Our results demonstrate that these motivations predict people’s intentions to donate personal data over and above generic altruistic motives and relevant personality traits. We show that a prosocial motive to serve society is the strongest predictor of the intention to donate personal data, while understanding the purpose of data donation also positively predicting the intentions to donate personal data. In contrast, self-serving motives show a negative association with intentions to donate personal data. The findings presented here inform the ethical use of commercially collected personal data for academic research for public good.

This paper analyzes seasonal effects and their potential drivers in charitable giving. We conduct two studies to analyze whether donations to the German Red Cross differ between the Christmas season and summer. In study 1 we find that in the pre-Christmas shopping season prosocial subjects almost donate 50% less compared to prosocials in summer. In study 2 we replicate the low donations in the Christmas season. In an extensive questionnaire we control for several causes of this effect. The data suggest that the higher prosocials’ self-reported stress level, the lower the donations. The higher their relative savings, the lower the giving. Our questionnaire rules out that “donation fatigue” matters. That is, donations do not depend on the number of charitable campaigns subjects are confronted with and their engagement in these activities during Christmas season outside the lab.

The research reported in this paper was supported by Economic and Social Research Council grant ES/L003104/1 ‘Beyond the banality of evil: A new understanding of conformity and atrocity’ to SR, https://esrc.ukri.org. In Milgram’s seminal obedience studies, participants’ behaviour has traditionally been explained as a demonstration of people’s tendency to enter into an ‘agentic state’ when in the presence of an authority figure: they attend only to the demands of that authority and are insensitive to the plight of their victims. There have been many criticisms of this view, but most rely on either indirect or anecdotal evidence. In this study, participants (n = 40) are taken through a Virtual Reality simulation of the Milgram paradigm. Compared to control participants (n = 20) who are not taken through the simulation, those in the experimental conditions are found to attempt to help the Learner more by putting greater emphasis on the correct word over the incorrect words. We also manipulate the extent to which participants identify with the science of the study and show that high identifiers both give more help, are less stressed, and are more hesitant to press the shock button than low identifiers. We conclude that these findings constitute a refutation of the ‘agentic state’ approach to obedience. Instead, we discuss implications for the alternative approaches such as ‘engaged followership’ which suggests that obedience is a function of relative identification with the science and with the victim in the study. Finally, we discuss the value of Virtual Reality as a technique for investigating hard-to-study psychological phenomena. Publisher PDF

Social rewards as praise from others enhance offline improvements in human motor skills. Does praise from artificial beings, e.g., computer-graphics-based agents (displayed agents) and robots (collocated agents), also enhance offline improvements in motor skills as effectively as praise from humans? This paper answers this question via two subsequent days’ experiment. We investigated the effect of the number of agents and their sense of presence toward offline improvement in motor skills because they are essential factors to change social effects and people’s behaviors in human-agent and human-robot interaction. Our 96 participants performed a finger-tapping task. Our results showed that those who received praise from two agents showed significantly better offline motor skill improvement than people who were praised by just one agent and those who received no praise. However, we identified no significant effects related to the sense of presence.

In this paper we explored the effects of exposure to images of the suffering and vulnerability\ud of others on altruistic, trust-based, and reciprocated incentivized economic decisions,\ud accounting for differences in participants’ dispositional empathy and reported in-group trust\ud for their recipient(s). This was done using a pictorial priming task, framed as a memory test,\ud and a triadic economic game design. Using the largest experimental sample to date to\ud explore this issue, our integrated analysis of two online experiments (total N = 519), found\ud statistically consistent evidence that exposure to images of suffering and vulnerability (vs.\ud neutral images) increased altruistic in-group giving as measured by the “triple dictator\ud game”, and that the manipulation was significantly more effective in those who reported\ud lower trust for their recipients. The experimental manipulation also significantly increased\ud altruistic giving in the standard “dictator game” and trust-based giving in the “investment\ud game”, but only in those who were lower in in-group trust and also high in affective or cognitive\ud empathy. Complementary qualitative evidence revealed the strongest motivations\ud associated with increased giving in the experimental condition were greater assumed reciprocation\ud and a lower aversion to risk. However, no consistent effects of the experimental\ud manipulation on participants’ reciprocated decisions were observed. These findings suggest\ud that, as well as altruistic decision-making in the “triple dictator game”, collaboratively witnessing\ud the suffering of others may heighten trust-based in-group giving in the “investment\ud game” for some people, but the effects are heterogeneous and sensitive to context.

Within this paper we explore the idea of a critical value representing the proportion of majority members within a group that affects dramatic changes in influence targets’ conformity. We consider the threshold q-voter model when the responses of the Willis-Nail model, a well-established two-dimensional model of social response, are used as a foundation. Specifically, we study a generalized threshold q-voter model when all basic types of social response described by Willis-Nail model are considered, i.e. conformity, anticonformity, independence, and uniformity/congruence. These responses occur in our model with complementary probabilities. We introduce independently two thresholds: one needed for conformity, as well as a second one for anticonformity. In the case of conformity, at least r individuals among q neighbors have to share the same opinion in order to persuade a voter to follow majority’s opinion, whereas in the case of anticonformity, at least w individuals among q neighbors have to share the same opinion in order to influence voters to take an opinion that goes against that of their own reference group. We solve the model on a complete graph and show that the threshold for conformity significantly influences the results. For example, there is a critical threshold for conformity above which the system behaves as in the case of unanimity, i.e. displays continuous and discontinuous phase transitions. On the other hand, the threshold for anticonformity is almost irrelevant. We discuss our results from the perspective of theories of social psychology, as well as the philosophy of agent-based modeling.

Psychological and other persuasive mechanisms across diverse contexts are well researched, with many studies of the effectiveness of specific persuasive techniques on distinct types of human behaviour. In the present paper, our specific interest lies in the development of a generalized modular psychometric tool to measure individuals' susceptibility to persuasion. The scale is constructed using items from previously developed and validated particulate scales established in the domains of social psychology and behavioural economics. In the first study we establish the Susceptibility to Persuasion II (StP-II) scale, containing 54 items, 10 subscales and further 6 sub-sub scales. In Study 2 we establish the scale's construct validity and reconfirm its reliability. We present a valid and reliable modular psychometric tool that measures general susceptibility to persuasive techniques. Since its inception, we have successfully implemented the StP-II scale to measure susceptibility to persuasion of IT security officers, the role of psychology of persuasion in cybercrime victims and general persuadability levels of Facebook users; these manuscripts are in preparation. We argue that the StP-II scale shows promise in measuring individual differences in susceptibility to persuasion, and is applicable across diverse contexts such as Internet security and cybercrime.

Even though chronic stress is a pervasive problem in contemporary societies and is known to potentially precede both adverse psychological as well as physiological conditions, its effects on decision making have not been systematically investigated. In this paper, we focus on the relation between self-reported chronic stress and self-reported as well as behaviorally shown social preferences. We measured chronic stress with the Trier Inventory for Chronic Stress. To determine social preferences, participants played a double anonymous dictator game. In order to control for the robustness of social preferences we employed a 2x2x2x2 design where we manipulated four variables: the frame (Give to Recipient vs. Take from Recipient), the decision maker's gender (Female vs. Male), the recipient's gender (Female vs. Male), and the nature of the reward (Real vs. Hypothetical). Results show that perceived chronic stress is not significantly related to social preferences in monetarily rewarded dictator decisions for either gender. However, women's displayed preferences for hypothetical rewards are negatively correlated to chronic stress levels. This indicates that higher chronic stress in women is associated with lower hypothetical transfers but not with altered actual behavior as compared to non-stressed women. For men, we do not observe such effects. Our findings suggest that, while chronic stress leaves social preferences unaffected in an incentive compatible task, it might foster what could be interpreted as a decrease in self-image promotion in women. Thus, we conclude that in a thoroughly controlled behavioral task differences in reported chronic stress do not entail differences in social preferences, but relate to variation in hypothetical decisions for women.

Arrogant behavior is as old as human nature. Nonetheless, the factors that cause people to be perceived as arrogant have received very little research attention. In this paper, we focused on a typical manifestation of arrogance: dismissive behavior. In particular, we explored the conditions under which a person who dismissed advice would be perceived as arrogant. We examined two factors: the advisee's competence, and the manner in which he or she dismissed the advice. The effect of the advisee's competence was tested by manipulating two competence cues: relative expertise, and the outcome of the advice dismissal (i.e., whether the advisee was right or wrong). In six studies (N = 1304), participants made arrogance judgments about protagonists who dismissed the advice of another person while the advisees' relative expertise (compared to the advisor), their eventual correctness, and the manner of their dismissal were manipulated in between-participant designs. Across various types of decisions and advisee-advisor relationships, the results show that less expert, less correct, and ruder advisees are perceived as more arrogant. We also find that outcome trumps expertise, and manner trumps both expertise and outcomes. In two additional studies (N = 101), we examined people's naïve theories about the relative importance of the aforementioned arrogance cues. These studies showed that people overestimate the role of expertise information as compared to the role of interpersonal manner and outcomes. Thus, our results suggest that people may commit arrogant faux pas because they erroneously expect that their expertise will justify their dismissive behavior.

Cooperation amongst resource users holds the key to overcoming the social dilemma that characterizes community-based common-pool resource management. But is cooperation alone enough to achieve sustainable resource use? The short answer is no. Developing management strategies in a complex social-ecological environment also requires ecological knowledge and approaches to deal with perceived environmental uncertainty. Recent behavioral experimental research indicates variation in the degree to which a group of users can identify a sustainable exploitation level. In this paper, we identify social-ecological micro-foundations that facilitate cooperative sustainable common-pool resource use. We do so by using an agent-based model (ABM) that is informed by behavioral common-pool resource experiments. In these experiments, groups that cooperate do not necessarily manage the resource sustainably, but also over- or underexploit. By reproducing the patterns of the behavioral experiments in a qualitative way, the ABM represents a social-ecological explanation for the experimental observations. We find that the ecological knowledge of each group member cannot sufficiently explain the relationship between cooperation and sustainable resource use. Instead, the development of a sustainable exploitation level depends on the distribution of ecological knowledge among the group members, their influence on each other's knowledge, and the environmental uncertainty the individuals perceive. The study provides insights about critical social-ecological micro-foundations underpinning collective action and sustainable resource management. These insights may inform policy-making, but also point to future research needs regarding the mechanisms of social learning, the development of shared management strategies and the interplay of social and ecological uncertainty.

People are motivated to hold favorable attitudes about the systems on which they depend, so they justify (i.e., rationalize, defend and bolster) forms of social and economic inequality, even if the inequality is disadvantageous to them. This paper examines how this system-justifying motivation is reflected in behaviors involving interpersonal trust. In a series of three experiments using the trust game I manipulate income inequality by providing participants with higher (advantaged position) or lower (disadvantaged position) initial endowments and measure their trust toward individuals on the same or on different positions. Results show that higher income individuals trust other higher income individuals more than lower income individuals (ingroup favoritism), while lower income individuals trust higher income individuals more than lower income individuals (outgroup favoritism). It is also shown that the strength of these biases is dependent on the level of endorsement of system justifying ideology and the legitimacy of the system. More trust toward those in advantaged positions within a social system, expressed both by equally advantaged as well as by disadvantaged others, not only secures the advantaged in their positions but also reinforces the underlying inequality.

This paper advances theories of social learning through an empirical examination of how social networks change over time. Social networks are important for learning because they constrain individuals' access to information about the behaviors and cognitions of other people. Using data on a large social network of mobile device users over a one-month time period, we test three hypotheses: 1) attraction homophily causes individuals to form ties on the basis of attribute similarity, 2) aversion homophily causes individuals to delete existing ties on the basis of attribute dissimilarity, and 3) social influence causes individuals to adopt the attributes of others they share direct ties with. Statistical models offer varied degrees of support for all three hypotheses and show that these mechanisms are more complex than assumed in prior work. Although homophily is normally thought of as a process of attraction, people also avoid relationships with others who are different. These mechanisms have distinct effects on network structure. While social influence does help explain behavior, people tend to follow global trends more than they follow their friends.

This paper reports on a social discounting experiment conducted with university students in South Africa. In line with other social discounting task experiments, participants identify target individuals at different degrees of intimacy in their social network and then make 10 choices involving sums of money for themselves or their targets. For an altruism premium to exist, senders’ donations to recipients should be positive, statistically and economically significant, and independent of relationship closeness. We hypothesize that in addition to the altruism premium for kin documented in the literature, there may be other premia for family in general and for partners and friends. We find that, apart from the “kinship” premium, there is a sizeable “intimacy” premium, which together translates into a substantial “family” premium. The study also finds a “friendship premium”, as is documented in various experiments. The closeness of relationships among family and kin, especially close kin, has a significant and large effect on altruism. The results also attest to the importance of the extended family in regards to the “kinship” premium on altruism. These various premiums on altruism emphasise the importance of the supportive role of various social systems. Nevertheless, altruism within families and among close kin might also be enhanced by building more cohesive and stronger families using developmental social welfare programmes.

Demonstrability—the extent to which group members can recognize a correct solution to a problem—has a significant effect on group performance. However, the interplay between group size, demonstrability and performance is not well understood. This paper addresses these gaps by studying the joint effect of two factors—the difficulty of solving a problem and the difficulty of verifying the correctness of a solution—on the ability of groups of varying sizes to converge to correct solutions. Our empirical investigations use problem instances from different computational complexity classes, NP-Complete (NPC) and PSPACE-complete (PSC), that exhibit similar solution difficulty but differ in verification difficulty. Our study focuses on nominal groups to isolate the effect of problem complexity on performance. We show that NPC problems have higher demonstrability than PSC problems: participants were significantly more likely to recognize correct and incorrect solutions for NPC problems than for PSC problems. We further show that increasing the group size can actually decrease group performance for some problems of low demonstrability. We analytically derive the boundary that distinguishes these problems from others for which group performance monotonically improves with group size. These findings increase our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie group problem-solving processes, and can inform the design of systems and processes that would better facilitate collective decision-making.

This paper presents five studies on the development and validation of a scale of intellectual humility. This scale captures cognitive, affective, behavioral, and motivational components of the construct that have been identified by various philosophers in their conceptual analyses of intellectual humility. We find that intellectual humility has four core dimensions: Open-mindedness (versus Arrogance), Intellectual Modesty (versus Vanity), Corrigibility (versus Fragility), and Engagement (versus Boredom). These dimensions display adequate self-informant agreement, and adequate convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity. In particular, Open-mindedness adds predictive power beyond the Big Six for an objective behavioral measure of intellectual humility, and Intellectual Modesty is uniquely related to Narcissism. We find that a similar factor structure emerges in Germanophone participants, giving initial evidence for the model’s cross-cultural generalizability.

Although the understanding of and motivation behind individual trading behavior is an important puzzle in finance, little is known about the connection between an investor's portfolio structure and her trading behavior in practice. In this paper, we investigate the relation between what stocks investors hold, and what stocks they buy, and show that investors with similar portfolio structures to a great extent trade in a similar way. With data from the central register of shareholdings in Sweden, we model the market in a similarity network, by considering investors as nodes, connected with links representing portfolio similarity. From the network, we find groups of investors that not only identify different investment strategies, but also represent groups of individual investors trading in a similar way. These findings suggest that the stock portfolios of investors hold meaningful information, which could be used to earn a better understanding of stock market dynamics., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, 1 table