It has recently been argued that giving is spontaneous while greed is calculated (Rand et al., in Nature 489:427–430, 2012). If greed is calculated we would expect that cognitive load, which is assumed to reduce the influence of cognitive processes, should affect greed. In this paper we study both charitable giving and the behavior of dictators under high and low cognitive load to test if greed is affected by the load. This is tested in three different dictator game experiments. In the dictator games we use both a give frame, where the dictators are given an amount that they may share with a partner, and a take frame, where dictators may take from an amount initially allocated to the partner. The results from all three experiments show that the behavioral effect in terms of allocated money of the induced load is small if at all existent. At the same time, follow-up questions indicate that the subjects’ decisions are more impulsive and less driven by their thoughts under cognitive load.

We conduct a lab experiment to investigate an important corporate prediction market setting: A manager needs information about the state of a project, which workers have, in order to make a state-dependent decision. Workers can potentially reveal this information by trading in a corporate prediction market. We test two different market designs to determine which provides more information to the manager and leads to better decisions. We also investigate the effect of top-down advice from the market designer to participants on how the prediction market is intended to function. Our results show that the theoretically superior market design performs worse in the lab—in terms of manager decisions—without top-down advice. With advice, manager decisions improve and both market designs perform similarly well, although the theoretically superior market design features less mis-pricing. We provide a behavioral explanation for the failure of the theoretical predictions and discuss implications for corporate prediction markets in the field.

Welfare-enhancing policies such as congestion pricing are argued to improve efficiency in situations with externalities. Unfamiliarity and lack of any personal experience with such policies, however, can hinder their implementation; particularly the ex-ante uncertainties of incidences of gains and losses as well as debates regarding equity concerns and how to recycle revenues often stymies implementation. This paper employs a laboratory experiment with heterogeneous users to investigate the effectiveness and acceptability of a toll in a six-player-two-route congestion game. To measure acceptability and how it is affected by experience with the toll, we conduct referenda before, during, and after subjects experience a congestion problem and a toll. The experiment employs a $2\times 2$ design that varies two treatments: the rate of revenue reallocation and the level of information before the final vote. After an experiential learning phase, congestion pricing is found to curb congestion effectively, and although some subjects do not vote in their monetary self-interest initially, the majority does so after experiencing the congestion pricing policy. Data on worldviews and beliefs are collected and matched to voting behavior to examine the evolution of how experience determines acceptability. Some worldviews and beliefs can predict voting behavior and the timing of when an individual finds a toll (un)acceptable.

There is conflicting evidence about whether abundant resources are indeed a blessing or a curse. We make use of specially designed economic experiments to investigate how resource abundance affects cooperation in the absence or presence of regulatory institutions. We observe that in the absence of regulatory institutions, there is less cooperation in groups with access to large resource pools than in groups with access to small resource pools. However, if regulatory institutions are present, we show that there is more cooperation in groups with access to large resource pools than in groups with access to small resource pools. Our findings also reveal that resource users are more willing to regulate access to abundant than to small resource pools. These findings provide causal evidence for the “paradox of plenty” and identify the causes for the pitfalls and potentials of resource wealth.

We examine how multitasking affects performance. We also examine whether individuals optimally choose their degree of multitasking or whether they perform better under an externally imposed schedule. Subjects in our experiment perform two different tasks according to one of three treatments: one where they perform the tasks sequentially, one where they are forced to multitask, and one where they can freely organize their work. Subjects who are forced to multitask perform significantly worse than those forced to work sequentially. Surprisingly, subjects who can freely organize their own schedule also perform significantly worse. These results suggest that scheduling is a significant determinant of productivity. Finally, our results do not support the stereotype that women are better at multitasking. Women suffer as much as men when forced to multitask and are actually less inclined to multitask when being free to choose.

We investigate the role of endowment inequality in a local and global public goods setting with multiple group membership and examine the effect of temporal role reversal on cooperation decisions. Subjects can contribute to a global public good which benefits all subjects and two local public goods which benefit only subjects of either their own group or the group of the other endowment type. Endowment inequality per-se decreases contributions of subjects with a high endowment to the global public good, but increases cooperation of subjects with a low endowment on their local public good, thereby aggravating income disparities. Exogenously induced role reversal for several periods affects cooperation behavior of subjects with a high endowment positively and induces them to contribute more to the global good. Cooperation in unequal environments thus appears to be more stable when all parties have experienced the public goods game from the disadvantageous perspective.

This paper theoretically and experimentally investigates the impact of information provision on voluntary contributions to a linear public good with an uncertain marginal per-capita return (MPCR). Uninformed donors make contribution decisions based only on the expected MPCR (i.e. the prior distribution), while informed donors observe the realized MPCR before contributing. The theoretical analysis predicts that the impact of information on average contributions crucially depends on the generosity level of the population, modeled as a stochastic change in the pro-social preferences. In particular, a less generous population increases contributions substantially in response to good news of higher than expected MPCR and reduces contributions relatively little in response to bad news of lower than expected MPCR. The opposite is true for a more generous population. Thus, the theory predicts that information provision increases (reduces) average contributions when the population is less (more) generous. This prediction finds strong support in a two-stage lab experiment. The first stage measures subjects’ generosity in the public good game using an online experiment. The resulting measure is used to create more and less generous groups in the public good lab experiment, which varies the information provided to these groups in the lab. The findings are in line with the theoretical predictions, suggesting that targeted information provision to less generous groups may be more beneficial for public good contributions than uniform information provision.

The expanding literature on lying has exclusively considered lying behavior within a one-dimensional context. While this has been an important first step, many real-world contexts involve the possibility of simultaneously lying in more than one dimension (e.g., reporting one’s income and expenses in a tax declaration). We experimentally investigate individual lying behavior in one- and two-dimensional contexts to understand how the multi-dimensionality of a decision affects lying behavior. Our paper provides the first evidence regarding the pure effect of dimensionality on lying behavior. Using a two-dimensional die-roll task, we show that participants distribute lies unevenly across dimensions, which results in greater over-reporting of the lower-outcome die.

Cognitive appraisal theory predicts that emotions affect participation decisions around risky collective action. However, little existing research has attempted to parse out the mechanisms by which this process occurs. We build a global game of regime change and discuss the effects that fear may have on participation through pessimism about the state of the world, other players’ willingness to participate, and risk aversion. We test the behavioral effects of fear in this game by conducting 32 sessions of an experiment in two labs where participants are randomly assigned to an emotion induction procedure. In some rounds of the game, potential mechanisms are shut down to identify their contribution to the overall effect of fear. Our results show that in this context, fear does not affect willingness to participate. This finding highlights the importance of context, including integral versus incidental emotions and the size of the stakes, in shaping effect of emotions on behavior.

Iyengar et al. (1984, The Evening News and Presidential Evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46(4): 778–87) discovered the media priming effect, positing that by drawing attention to certain issues while ignoring others, television news programs help define the standards by which presidents are evaluated. We conducted a direct replication of Experiment 1 by Iyengar et al. (1984, The Evening News and Presidential Evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46(4): 778–87) with some changes. Specifically, we (a) collected data from Japanese undergraduates; (b) reduced the number of conditions to two; (c) used news coverage of the issue of relocating US bases in Okinawa as the treatment; (d) measured issue-specific evaluations of the Japanese Prime Minister in the pre-treatment questionnaire; and (e) performed statistical analyses that are more appropriate for testing heterogeneity in the treatment effect. We did not find statistically significant evidence of media priming. Overall, the results suggest that the effects of media priming may be quite sensitive either to the media environment or to differences in populations in which the effect has been examined.

Carey and Hix (2011) propose that a proportional electoral system with a moderate number of seats per district offers the best compromise between (1) accurate representation and (2) strong accountability. The argument is that there is a district magnitude (DM) level where the trade-off between proportionality and fragmentation of parties is optimal. This DM is called the sweet spot. We explore this proposition through lab experiments conducted in Brussels and Montreal. We find that the probability of achieving a “good” outcome on both proportionality and the number of parties is slightly higher at moderate DMs. We note, however, that this probability remains low.

Increasingly, experimental research is being conducted on the Internet in addition to the laboratory. Online experiments are more convenient for subjects and researchers, but we know little about how the choice of study location affects data quality. To investigate whether respondent behavior differs across study location, we randomly assign subjects to participate in a study in a laboratory or in an online setting. Contrary to our expectations, we find few differences between participants in terms of the level of attention and socially desirable responding. However, we find significant differences in two areas: the degree of self-reported distractions while completing the questionnaire and the tendency to consult outside sources for answers to political knowledge questions. We conclude that when the greater convenience (and higher response rates) of online experiments outweighs these disadvantages, Internet administration of randomized experiments represent an alternative to laboratory administration.