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This project is concerned with the implications of sleep loss for coordination. More specifically, it aims to explore whether sleep deprivation influences subjects’ ability to successfully use focal points. Research shows that sleep loss has a significantly adverse impact on physical health and cognitive functioning. The neurobehavioral deficits resulting from sleep loss range from attention, reaction times, vigilance and memory, to more complex cognitive abilities, such as judgement, decision-making, and inhibitory control. Castillo and Dickinson (2018) have demonstrated that sleep restriction significantly increases the likelihood of coordination failure in a Minimum Effort Coordination Game. We will study whether sleep disruption in the form of one night of sleep deprivation affects the use of focal points in coordination games with and without conflict of interests and payoff inequality. The ability to successfully use the focal point when interests are divergent seems to be correlated to some level of cognitive sophistication, namely the degree to which a player can reason about other players. Both the cognitive hierarchy theory and the level-k model have been frequently used to explain behaviour in coordination games (Camerer et al., 2004; Costa-Gomes and Crawford, 2006). These theories state that players tend to choose a strategy by assuming that their strategy is the most sophisticated and by following specific iterative decision rules. Drawing on this literature and given the negative effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive functions, a natural question to ask is whether sleep deprivation influences subjects’ ability to successfully use focal points successfully. Differential effectiveness of cues of a given strength in pure coordination vs. battle-of-the sexes games is one of the key questions people have been asking about focal points. One possibility is that the presence or absence of conflicts of interest determines the mode of reasoning (team reasoning vs. level-k) that players adopt. Another, related possibility, is that conflicts of interest interfere with the process of ‘group identification’ that is thought to be a prerequisite of team reasoning. By studying the impact of sleep deprivation, we will shed light on the channels through which the disruptive effect of conflict of interest can manifest itself. We will do so by collecting data through an online survey and an online experimental session. Participants will take part in the experimental session on the morning following either a night of sleep deprivation or a night of normal sleep. Sleep data will be collected through specific questionnaires. We will explore participants’ ability to successfully use focal points observing their performance in a variant of three coordination games, namely the Battle-of-the-Sexes, Pure Coordination, and the more recently developed Pizza Night Game (Isoni et al., 2020). References: Camerer, C.F., Ho, T.-H, Chong, J.-K. (2004). A cognitive hierarchy model of games. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 119(3), 861-898. Castillo, M., & Dickinson, D. L. (2018). Sleep restriction increases coordination failure. Working paper. Costa-Gomes, M.A., Crawford, V.P. (2006). Cognition and behavior in two-person guessing games: an experimental study. American Economic Review. 96(5), 1737-1768. Isoni, A., Sugden, R., & Zheng, J. (2020). The pizza night game: Conflict of interest and payoff inequality in tacit bargaining games with focal points. European Economic Review, 127, 103428.

CBA introduced Apple Pay as a new payment method on 23 January 2019. Apple Pay allows customers with iPhones to make contactless payments using the Apple Pay mobile wallet. In contrast, non-iPhone customers were unable to use Apple Pay when it was introduced. We will conduct a difference-in-difference analysis to estimate the intention-to-treat effect of introducing Apple Pay. The treatment group is customers with iPhones and the control group is those without iPhones.

Previous literature has demonstrated that actions that bring both prosocial and personal benefits might be viewed less favourably than equivalent self-interested behaviours without any prosocial benefits (e.g. Carlson and Zaki, 2018; Lin-Healy and Small, 2012, 2013; Makov and Newman, 2016; Newman and Cain, 2014). Newman and Cain (2014), for example, conducted a series of experiments, to investigate the conditions under which people may evaluate actions that produce both charitable and personal benefits less positively than equivalent self-interested actions that produce no charitable benefit. The authors refer to this possibility as the “tainted altruism” effect and suggest that the effect is related to the accessibility of different counterfactuals: when people consider a behaviour that realizes both charitable and personal benefits, they think the agent could have been more altruistic, while this thought does not spontaneously arise when presented with purely selfish behaviour (Newman and Cain, 2014). More recently, researchers have investigated whether the tainted altruism effect holds for behavioural interventions, namely nudges. Alempaki, Isoni and Read (2020) explored whether prosocial nudges that also result in a benefit for the nudger (i.e. increased profit) are viewed less favourably than a solely prosocial nudge (coined a weak tainted nudge effect). Furthermore, they investigated whether prosocial nudges that also result in a benefit for the nudger (i.e. increased profit) are viewed less favourably than a solely private-benefit nudge (coined a strong tainted nudge effect). The focus of the current project is Study 3a by Alempaki, Isoni and Read (2020), where the role of deception is investigated in an attempt to explore its role in generating a strong tainted nudge effect. In this study, participants were presented with a hypothetical scenario describing a university’s new initiative. The initiative consisted of giving residential university students a default meal (the nudge) which could be changed if students fill out a form one week in advance. Participants were randomly allocated to one of two experimental conditions. In the first condition, participants were told the nudger’s motivation was solely profit (P). In the second condition, however, participants were told that although the nudger’s intentions were solely to make profit, they deceptively declared that an unintentional, pro-social benefit was the primary motivation for the nudge (Hd + P). After reading the corresponding scenario, all participants were asked to evaluate the university’s initiative with respect to different dimensions; namely, morality, prosociality, support and honesty. These questions were presented in a randomised order (see Dependent Variable section for a detailed description). Although the researchers hypothesized that the nudger’s deception would result in a strong tainted nudge effect in all the aforementioned dimensions, their findings indicated that this was only the case for the prosociality and honesty measures - with the latter dimension also serving as a manipulation check. On the other hand, no strong tainted nudge effect was observed for the support and morality measures. In fact, participants supported the Hd + P condition significantly more than the P condition, suggesting that participants are sensitive to the health benefit even when deception is involved. In Alempaki et al.’s (2020) setting, participants were asked to imagine other people being nudged in both conditions. This is particularly important in the Hd + P condition, where other people were being deceived, rather than the evaluator. This may have contributed to the mixed strong tainted nudge effects observed, as participants may not have been as sensitive to the deception described in the scenario. For this reason, the aim of the current study is twofold: first, to replicate Alempaki et al.’s (2020) Study 3a, and second, to explore whether changing the framing of the scenarios so that participants imagine themselves being nudged (and potentially deceived) results in a strong tainted nudge effect in all dimensions. We will conduct an experiment with four conditions in total, divided in two sets. Set 1 has two conditions, which will replicate exactly the two between-subject conditions of Study 3a ((Hd + P)general; (P)general) of Alempaki et al. (2020). Set 2 has two conditions ((Hd + P)personal; (P)personal) that match the equivalent conditions in Set 1, except for the change in framing so that participants imagine themselves being personally lied to, rather than a general lie to people other than themselves. References - Carlson, R. W., & Zaki, J. (2018). Good deeds gone bad: Lay theories of altruism and selfishness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 75, 36-40. - Lin-Healy, F., & Small, D. A. (2012). Cheapened altruism: Discounting personally affected prosocial actors. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 117(2), 269-274. - Lin-Healy, F., & Small, D. A. (2013). Nice guys finish last and guys in last are nice: The clash between doing well and doing good.Social Psychological and Personality Science,4(6), 692-698. - Makov, T., & Newman, G. E. (2016). Economic gains stimulate negative evaluations of corporate sustainability initiatives. Nature Climate Change, 6(9), 844-846. - Newman, G. E., & Cain, D. M. (2014). Tainted altruism: When doing some good is evaluated as worse than doing no good at all. Psychological science, 25(3), 648-655. - Alempaki, D., Isoni, A., & Read, D. (2020). Tainted Nudge. Unpublished manuscript

Prior studies have demonstrated that “win-win” behaviours that bring both prosocial and personal benefits might be evaluated less favourably than equivalent self-interested behaviours without any prosocial benefits (e.g. Carlson and Zaki, 2018; Lin-Healy and Small, 2012, 2013; Makov and Newman, 2016; Newman and Cain, 2014). Newman and Cain (2014), for example, conducted a series of experiments, to investigate the conditions under which people may evaluate actions that produce both charitable and personal benefits less positive than equivalent self-interested actions that produce no charitable benefit. The authors refer to this possibility as the “tainted altruism” effect and suggest that the effect is related to the accessibility of different counterfactuals: when people consider a behaviour that realizes both charitable and personal benefits, they think the agent could have been more altruistic, while this thought does not spontaneously arise when presented with purely selfish behaviour (Newman and Cain, 2014). The focus of our study is Experiment 1 of Newman and Cain (2014). In this experiment, participants were presented with a situation describing a man who spends several hours per week volunteering at her workplace in order to get a woman's affection. There were two identical scenarios that differ only with respect to the woman’s workplace: either a homeless shelter (in which the man’s actions resulted in a charitable benefit) or a coffee shop (in which the benefit was neutral). Participants were randomly allocated to one of three experimental groups. The first group read a scenario about a man volunteering at the homeless shelter (shelter condition), the second group read a scenario about a man volunteering at the coffee shop (coffee condition), and the third group read both scenarios (within-subject condition). After reading the scenario(s), participants were asked to evaluate the man’s actions with respect to Morality and perceived Benefit (see Dependent Variable section for a detailed description). Participants judged the actor’s behaviour as significantly less moral in the shelter than in the coffee condition. However, in the within-subject condition, in which a third group of participants evaluated both scenarios, ratings of the actor’s morality were not affected by the workplace. When it comes to the perceived benefit, participants evaluated the actor’s actions as equally beneficial regardless of the workplace in the between-subject comparison, whereas in the case of the within-subject presentation the actor’s actions were rated more beneficial when he volunteered at the homeless shelter rather than at the coffee shop. The authors concluded that the negative evaluation in morality judgements in the between-subject conditions was driven by the tainted altruism effect. They suggested that, when people consider a charitable benefit, they expect the actor to behave selflessly, and therefore judge them negatively if they obtain a private benefit. However, if the benefit is neutral, people do not consider whether a man could have acted more altruistically, and as a result, they do not think negatively about them. However, people realize their inconsistency when presented with both scenarios (within-subject condition), thus, the tainted altruism effect in morality disappears. The aim of our study is twofold: first, to replicate the tainted altruism effect found in Experiment 1 of Newman and Cain (2014), and second, to extend it to new domains, specifically to consider how tainted actions are perceived in the context of the current Covid19 pandemic. We will focus on the two between-subject conditions (shelter, coffee) of Experiment 1 of Newman and Cain (2014). We will conduct an experiment with seven conditions in total, divided in three sets. Set 1 has three conditions. Two conditions will replicate exactly the two between-subject conditions of Experiment 1 (shelter, coffee) of Newman and Cain (2014). The third condition is a variant of the coffee condition, in which the coffee shop is replaced with a garden centre (garden condition), to ensure the plausibility of volunteering during the pandemic (coffee shops have been shut for months). Set 2 has two conditions (shelter-risk, garden-risk) that match the equivalent conditions in Set 1, except for the addition of a statement that refers to the potential risk that the man catches Covid-19. Set 3 has two conditions (shelter-test, garden-test) that match those in Set 2, except for the addition of a statement about the man having secretly taken an antibody test and discovered his immunity to the virus, eliminating the risk of catching Covid-19. References Carlson, R. W., & Zaki, J. (2018). Good deeds gone bad: Lay theories of altruism and selfishness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 75, 36-40. Lin-Healy, F., & Small, D. A. (2012). Cheapened altruism: Discounting personally affected prosocial actors. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 117(2), 269-274. Lin-Healy, F., & Small, D. A. (2013). Nice guys finish last and guys in last are nice: The clash between doing well and doing good. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4(6), 692-698. Makov, T., & Newman, G. E. (2016). Economic gains stimulate negative evaluations of corporate sustainability initiatives. Nature Climate Change, 6(9), 844-846. Newman, G. E., & Cain, D. M. (2014). Tainted altruism: When doing some good is evaluated as worse than doing no good at all. Psychological science, 25(3), 648-655.

Experimental study testing for differences between risky preferences as expressed through choice and through 4 different valuation methods. This study focuses on risky choices which involve losses, an underexplored area in the preference reversal literature. It follows a similar project using multiple valuation methods to study preference reversals in gains. In addition to examining patterns of preferences we also test for differences in response times.

A recent stream of studies has demonstrated a tainted altruism effect in a variety of contexts (e.g. Carlson and Zaki, 2018; Lin-Healy and Small, 2012, 2013; Newman and Cain, 2014). These studies show that altruistic actions such as donating to a charity are seen as less altruistic or ethical if they also bring additional personal benefits to the person or organisation acting altruistically. It has been argued that, in the absence of other information about benefits or motives, people assume prosocial actions are carried out selflessly. The current study aims to investigate the tainted effect of profit both in the charitable domain and in the domain of prosocial nudges. In particular, we will investigate the relationship between: 1) attitudes towards charitable actions and the presence of material benefit on the part of the “altruist” (the organization acting charitably), and 2) attitudes towards nudging and the presence of material benefit on the part of the “nudger” (the organization deploying the nudge). In particular, we will test for the presence of a “tainted effect”, investigating whether an action that benefits a group other than the actor but also profits the actor is seen as worse than the same action when it does not profit the actor. We will also investigate the possibility of a “strong tainted effect”, that is, whether the action that benefits a group other than the actor but also profits the actor is seen as worse than a similar action that is only profitable. More specifically, we will examine the following questions: Q1. Are purely profitable actions evaluated more negatively than purely prosocial actions? Q2. Are prosocial actions that are also profitable for the actor evaluated more negatively than prosocial actions with no material benefit for the actor? (Tainted effect) Q3. Are prosocial actions that are also profitable for the actor evaluated more negatively than purely profitable actions? (Strong tainted effect) We will investigate our questions in two domains: charitable actions (“tainted altruism”), and prosocial nudges (“tainted nudge”). References - Carlson, R. W., & Zaki, J. (2018). Good deeds gone bad: Lay theories of altruism and selfishness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 75, 36-40. - Lin-Healy, F., & Small, D. A. (2012). Cheapened altruism: Discounting personally affected prosocial actors. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 117(2), 269-274. - Lin-Healy, F., & Small, D. A. (2013). Nice guys finish last and guys in last are nice: The clash between doing well and doing good. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4(6), 692-698. - Newman, G. E., & Cain, D. M. (2014). Tainted altruism: When doing some good is evaluated as worse than doing no good at all. Psychological science, 25 (3), 648-655.

A recent stream of studies has demonstrated a tainted altruism effect in a variety of contexts (e.g. Carlson and Zaki, 2018; Lin-Healy and Small, 2012, 2013; Newman and Cain, 2014). These studies show that altruistic actions such as donating to a charity are seen as less altruistic or ethical if they also bring additional personal benefits to the person or organisation acting altruistically. It has been argued that, in the absence of other information about benefits or motives, people assume prosocial actions are carried out selflessly. The current study aims to investigate the tainted effect of profit both in the charitable domain and in the domain of prosocial nudges. In particular, we will investigate the relationship between: 1) attitudes towards charitable actions and the presence of material benefit on the part of the “altruist” (the organization acting charitably), and 2) attitudes towards nudging and the presence of material benefit on the part of the “nudger” (the organization deploying the nudge). In particular, we will test for the presence of a “tainted effect”, investigating whether an action that benefits a group other than the actor but also profits the actor is seen as worse than the same action when it does not profit the actor. We will also investigate the possibility of a “strong tainted effect”, that is, whether the action that benefits a group other than the actor but also profits the actor is seen as worse than a similar action that is only profitable. More specifically, we will examine the following questions: Q1. Are purely profitable actions evaluated more negatively than purely prosocial actions? Q2. Are prosocial actions that are also profitable for the actor evaluated more negatively than prosocial actions with no material benefit for the actor? (Tainted effect) Q3. Are prosocial actions that are also profitable for the actor evaluated more negatively than purely profitable actions? (Strong tainted effect) We will investigate our questions in two domains: charitable actions (“tainted altruism”), and prosocial nudges (“tainted nudge”). References - Carlson, R. W., & Zaki, J. (2018). Good deeds gone bad: Lay theories of altruism and selfishness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 75, 36-40. - Lin-Healy, F., & Small, D. A. (2012). Cheapened altruism: Discounting personally affected prosocial actors. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 117(2), 269-274. - Lin-Healy, F., & Small, D. A. (2013). Nice guys finish last and guys in last are nice: The clash between doing well and doing good. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4(6), 692-698. - Newman, G. E., & Cain, D. M. (2014). Tainted altruism: When doing some good is evaluated as worse than doing no good at all. Psychological science, 25 (3), 648-655.

Our laboratory's Implementation of the Mazar_Srull RRR protocol

Pre-registration for an experimental study testing whether mask usage effects people's perceptions of safe distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic, in a UK sample.

The focus of our study is Experiment 4 of Makov and Newman (2016). In that experiment, participants are presented with two scenarios describing an initiative by a company that resulted in identical environmental and financial benefits, but had different primary motivations: either to earn a profit (market framing condition) or to help the environment (communal framing condition). More specifically, the scenarios describe a programme by a mobile network provider to collect used mobile devices, which generates profit for the company and has environmental benefits. In both scenarios, the company resells the used devices at a profit, but in doing so it also benefits the environment, as the unwanted devices would otherwise end up in landfills. In the market framing condition, the initiative is framed as a “resell” program, whereas in the communal framing condition it is framed as a “recycling” program. Participants are allocated randomly to one of the two conditions and are asked to evaluate the company on a series of dimensions (see Measured Variables). The results show that participants in the market framing condition evaluate the company significantly more positively than those in the communal framing condition. The authors conclude that the negative evaluation in the communal framing is the result of profits tainting the established prosocial norm that one should not profit from prosocial initiatives. However, they also suggest that the less positive evaluation in the communal framing may have been caused by the company deceiving the public. We explored this possibility in our previously pre-registered studies (Studies 1-3), which successfully replicated Makov and Newman’s Experiment 4 with some minor modifications (see preregistration document for Study 1), and showed that, keeping profit constant, the difference in the evaluation of the company between the market and communal framing is mainly caused by deception (see preregistration document for Study 2 and Study 3). The main objective of the current study (Study 6) is to investigate further the role of deception in causing negative evaluations of sustainability initiatives, and to test whether this is moderated by the presence of profit. Is it that individuals dislike deception per se or do they dislike deceptive practices only if they are accompanied by profits? To investigate this, in Study 6, we will expand on one of the experimental conditions (communal framing) used by Makov and Newman and some of our previous studies. In four experimental conditions, we will independently manipulate the presence/absence of deception and the presence/absence of profit: • No Deception–No Profit: the company informs individuals prominently when advertising the initiative that they might refurbish and resell the phones for profit; the company resells the phones, but after considering refurbishment and marketing costs, they make no profit; • Deception–No Profit: the company does not inform individuals when advertising the initiative that they might refurbish and resell the phones for profit; the company resells the phones, but after considering refurbishment and marketing costs, they make no profit; • No Deception–Profit: the company informs individuals prominently when advertising the initiative that they might refurbish and resell the phones for profit; the company resells the phones, and after considering refurbishment and marketing costs, they make a profit; • Deception–Profit: the company does not inform individuals when advertising the initiative that they might refurbish and resell the phones for profit; the company resells the phones, and after considering refurbishment and marketing costs, they make a profit. References - Makov, T., & Newman, G. E. (2016). Economic gains stimulate negative evaluations of corporate sustainability initiatives. Nature Climate Change, 6(9), 844-846.

Online experiment in which we aim to see whether the transaction data from which expenditures are derived (contactless, non-contactless), set length, skewness and standard deviation of the spending distribution and have an effect on how well an individual can estimate the total of that distribution.

The Covid-19 pandemic has stimulated a lot of research in behavioural science. The possibility that wearing a facemask or other form of coverings may alter the way we interact with each other seems to have so far been mostly overlooked. Therefore, the attention of this study is on the potential effects of surgical facemask wearing. We propose to investigate whether people show more or less trust towards a facemask wearer, and whether wearers elicit more or less trustworthiness. Trust and trustworthiness will be measured by means of a variant of the trust game, first used by Berg et al. (1995). In that game, two players are each given an endowment (e.g., £10). One of them (‘trustor’) moves first and has the opportunity to send any integer amount between £0 and £10 to a second mover (‘trustee’). Whatever is not sent is kept by the trustor. The trustee receives 3 times the amount sent by the trustor and can then decide how much (if any) of this amount she would like to send back to the trustor. The greater the amount the trustor sends to the trustee, the more he is said to trust her. If the trustee returns no less than what the trustor sent, she is said to be trustworthy. Reference: Berg, J., Dickhaut, J., and McCabe, K. (1995). Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History. Games and Economic Behavior 10(1): 122–142.

Experimental study testing for differences between risky preferences as expressed through choice and through 4 different valuation methods. This is the 4th study (3rd pre-registered) run as part of this project. In addition to examining patterns of preferences we also test for differences in response times.

This is a pre-registration for a follow up study to the study on Social distancing and Mask Usage in Covid-19. We aim to replciate the main findings, including confirm the results of exploratory analyses, and expand to look at age as a factor.

Previous studies have illustrated that people react negatively when organisations engage in win-win initiatives that simultaneously benefit both society (e.g., prosocial) and the organization (e.g., profit), and might evaluate them less favourably than equivalent self-interested initiatives without any prosocial benefits (e.g., sole profit benefits). This effect has been called “tainted altruism” (Lin-Healy & Small, 2013; Newman & Cain, 2014; Makov & Newman, 2016; Carlson & Zaki, 2018). A criticism of previous studies examining tainted altruism relates to the role of deception. Alempaki et al., (2018, 2020) show that a tainted altruism effect is more likely to be observed when there is a divergence between the actual and the stated motivation of an act. The effect will appear if the act is portrayed as motivated by prosocial reasons when, in fact, the actual motive is to make profit. The focus of this study is to investigate the tainting effect in the environmental domain and to further explore the role of deception. Deception occurs if an action is motivated by environmental reasons when, in fact, the actual motive is to make a profit. This study will also explore whether the presence of a side benefit for the consumer (i.e., a triple-win) affects participants’ judgements even when they have been deceived. The research questions can be summarised as follows: 1. Will the tainting effect occur in the environmental domain when the evaluator of the initiative is deceived personally by the company? 2. Will the tainting effect occur in the environmental domain when the evaluator of the initiative is deceived personally by the company, but the evaluator is also provided with a benefit? In this experiment, participants are randomly allocated to three groups in a between-subjects design. The study will use the vignette methodology. In all groups, participants are presented with a hypothetical scenario of a food company (Starfish Cornflakes) that has modified product packaging by making it smaller. In all groups, participants learn that the true motivation behind the packaging change is to increase the company’s profits. Two aspects will be manipulated across the three groups. First, whether there is a divergence in motivations between the actual motivation for the initiative and the stated motivation. Two, whether consumers gain a side benefit. In summary, the three conditions (IVs) are: • Profit: Participants learn that the change in product packaging was motivated by profit. The product price is unchanged. • Environment deception + Profit: This condition is identical to the first condition. However, in this condition, participants also learn that the company is now (deceptively) claiming the packaging change was motivated by environmental concerns. • Environment deception + Profit + Consumer: This condition is identical to the second. Except, instead of learning that the product price is unchanged, consumers receive a price discount due to the initiative. Participants will rate the initiative across four dimensions (DVs) to examine the tainting effect: Morality, Pro-environment, Support and Honesty. Alempaki, D., Isoni, A., Kato, Y., Read, D., & Wei, H. (2020). Deception aversion and consumer responses to sustainability initiatives (SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 3640256). Social Science Research Network. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3640256 Alempaki, D., Isoni, A., & Read, D. (2018). Tainted nudge. Unpublished Manuscript. Carlson, R. W., & Zaki, J. (2018). Good deeds gone bad: Lay theories of altruism and selfishness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 75, 36–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.11.005 Lin-Healy, F., & Small, D. A. (2013). Nice Guys Finish Last and Guys in Last Are Nice: The Clash Between Doing Well and Doing Good. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4(6), 692–698. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550613476308 Makov, T., & Newman, G. E. (2016). Economic gains stimulate negative evaluations of corporate sustainability initiatives. Nature Climate Change, 6(9), 844–846. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3033 Newman, G. E., & Cain, D. M. (2014). Tainted Altruism: When Doing Some Good Is Evaluated as Worse Than Doing No Good at All. Psychological Science, 25(3), 648–655. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613504785

Experimental study testing for differences between risky preferences as expressed through choice and through 4 different valuation methods. This is a replication of a preliminary study (that was no pre-registered), and follows a prior related pre-registered study. In addition to examining patterns of preferences we also test for differences in response times.

Many companies implement initiatives which integrate environmental-friendly principles into their business strategies, seeking to achieve a win-win outcome: enhance their financial or reputational performance as well as reduce their environmental impact. However, previous studies on “tainted altruism effect” have shown that economic gains combined with sustainability initiatives could backlash - people might evaluate environmental win-win initiatives less favourably than equivalent profit-enhancing ones that have no prosocial benefit (Makov and Newman, 2016; Newman and Cain, 2014). Newman and Cain (2014) proposed that this effect is related to norm violation and the accessibility of different counterfactuals. Alempaki et al. (2020) suggested deception aversion as an alternative mechanism: only when the company is perceived to be deceptive, people react negatively towards the initiative. They further argued that if the companies are upfront about the likely profitability of their sustainability initiatives, the backlash effect could be avoided. Two research questions will be explored in this study. First, we will examine the robustness of Alempaki et al.’s (2020) findings and test whether the tainting effect exists when the environmental benefit and the profit are transparently publicized, and so there is no room for deception. Also, if the company talks forthrightly about both, another question is which benefit should be communicated first—the environmental or the profit one? Secondly, we will investigate whether the presence of private benefits for evaluators could influence the strength of any tainted effect. In our experiment, participants will be randomly assigned to one of six between-subject conditions. We will use the vignette methodology. Participants will read a hypothetical scenario about a fleet renewal program implemented by an airline company (EuroJet Airlines). The difference across conditions lies in the communication of motives to implement the sustainability initiative, from the narrative of the spokesperson of the company. The six conditions are denoted as follows: E (environment-only), P (profitability-only), E+P (environment + profitability), P+E (profitability + environment), E+{P+C} (environment + {profitability + consumer benefit}), {P+C}+E ({profitability + consumer benefit} + environment). After reading the scenario, participants will rate the company answering 12 questions, which will be described in detail in the Dependent Variables section. The scientific benefits of this project are twofold: first, to enhance our understanding of tainted effects, and inform companies on how to appropriately communicate win-win initiatives. Second, to explore the role of a triple-win initiative in influencing the emergence of tainted effects. References: Alempaki, D., Isoni, A., Kato, Y., Read, D., & Wei, H. (2020). The role of deception in stimulating negative evaluations of win-win corporate sustainability initiatives. Available at SSRN. Alempaki, D., Isoni, A., & Read, D. (2020). Tainted Nudge. Unpublished manuscript. Makov, T., & Newman, G. E. (2016). Economic gains stimulate negative evaluations of corporate sustainability initiatives. Nature Climate Change, 6(9), 844-846. Newman, G. E., & Cain, D. M. (2014). Tainted altruism: When doing some good is evaluated as worse than doing no good at all. Psychological science, 25(3), 648-655.

Research has found there to be a negative effect of payment method on how accurately consumers can recall the amount they have spent. Payment methods include cash, PIN-verified debit cards and credit cards, and, newly introduced, contactless card payments. Differences in payment methods are said to be due to the pain of paying, which is not equal for all payment methods. We aim to test whether expenditure recall is worse for contactless payments as compared to cash and PIN-verified methods of payment. Second, we aim to test whether any differences are mediated by differences in the pain of paying.

This project aims to further study the attraction effect with naturalistic choice sets. In other words, the participants would be asked to make a choice between three options, one of which is worse than another on all dimensions. In previous studies, this has been done with numerical attributes. Our goal is to test for the attraction effect in naturalistic stimuli, more specifically given two movies between which a participant is indifferent, will adding a lower resolution version of one movie (therefore, a decoy) make that movie more attractive? The data will be collected through online surveys. In each trial, the participant will be shown three movie posters collected from IMDB and asked which one they would prefer to stream on their TV. All the choices will be hypothetical and participants will be paid an hourly rate of 6.9 pounds.