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on Cognitive and Behavioural Economics |
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Issue of 2026–03–30
four papers chosen by Marco Novarese, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Avichai Snir (Bar-Ilan University [Israël]); Dudi Levy (Bar-Ilan University [Israël]); Dian Wang (UTSA Department of Physics and Astronomy [San Antonio] - UTSA - The University of Texas at San Antonio); Haipeng Allan Chen (University of Iowa [Iowa City]); Daniel Levy (RCEA - Rimini Center for Economic Analysis, Emory University [Atlanta, GA], Bar-Ilan University [Israël], International School of Economics at TSU, ICEA - International Centre for Economic Analysis, NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research [New York] - NBER - The National Bureau of Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | We use survey experiments to demonstrate that manipulating participants' perceptions of the context can affect their decisions. We ran three survey experiments in the U.S. and Israel with participants from both economics and non-economics majors. In the experiments, participants face a tradeoff between profit maximization (market norm) and workers' welfare (social norm). Our experimental setup enables us to discriminate between the self-selection and indoctrination effects. Existing studies find that economics and noneconomics students make different choices in such situations, which the studies argue is because of differences in personality traits between economics students and others. While such differences might exist, we argue that context also plays an important role. Using priming to manipulate the context, we demonstrate that when participants receive cues signaling that their decision has an economic context, both economics and non-economics students tend to maximize profits. When participants receive cues emphasizing social norms, on the other hand, both economics and non-economics students are less likely to maximize profits. We find that the role of context in determining behavior is at least as large as the baseline differences between economics and non-economics students. |
| Keywords: | Economists vs. Non-Economists, Behavioral Economics, Market Norms, Social Norms, Self-Selection, Priming, Laboratory Experiments, Experimental Economics, Fairness, Rational Choice, Economic Man, Self-Interest, Indoctrination |
| Date: | 2026–03–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05541678 |
| By: | Nandini Maroo; Kavita Vemuri |
| Abstract: | Social relationships are known to shape human behavior, yet when and how social ties influence strategic cognition remains unclear. We adopt a dual-measure approach that combines observed gameplay behavior with elicitation of partner-specific beliefs at each decision point, allowing us to examine how social ties shape both decisions and predictions across interaction structures. Dyads classified as having no ties, weak ties, or strong ties played three canonical economic games: the Dictator Game, Ultimatum Game, and Centipede Game, while also making predictions about their partner's actions. Using a mixed design that held partners constant across games while varying social distance between dyads, we examined how relational proximity affected the alignment between behavior and partner-specific beliefs. Across two norm-saturated games (Dictator and Ultimatum), neither offers nor belief calibration differed reliably by social distance. In contrast, in the sequential Centipede Game, where outcomes depend on anticipating a specific partner's future actions, strong-tie dyads both cooperated longer and expected later termination than no-tie dyads, with beliefs and behavior shifting in parallel. These results indicate that social ties become strategically relevant when the interaction structure makes partner-specific accountability cognitively necessary, but not when behavior is governed primarily by shared norms or institutional constraints. The findings provide a structural account of when relational knowledge enters strategic cognition and help reconcile mixed results in prior work on social distance in economic games. |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2603.15700 |
| By: | Benjamin Pitt (IAST - Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse) |
| Abstract: | To navigate complex physical environments, animals keep track of the spatial relations among objects using various reference frames, both body-based (e.g., left/right) and environment-based (e.g., east/west), but how these spatial representations interact remains unresolved. Whereas neuroscientific findings show habitual integration across reference frames, psycholinguistic accounts suggest humans use one reference frame at a time, as in speech. This article examines whether people spontaneously use two reference frames in the same action. When placing a single object in a two-dimensional array, adult participants (N = 110) routinely used an environment-based frame to determine the object's left-right position while using a body-based frame to determine its front-back position at the same time. Such hybrid responses were prevalent among both Indigenous Tsimane' and educated U.S. participants, suggesting that people across cultures habitually construct compound cognitive maps to represent the multidimensional spatial relations that compose natural settings. |
| Keywords: | spatial, non-WEIRD, memory, culture, cognition |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05544906 |
| By: | Thomas {\AA}stebro; Frank M. Fossen; C\'edric Gutierrez |
| Abstract: | How do entrepreneurs act on their beliefs when probabilities of outcomes are unknown but subjectively perceived? We theorize that two distinct dimensions of ambiguity attitudes influence entrepreneurial action: ambiguity aversion - the unwillingness to bear ambiguity - and ambiguity sensitivity - how individuals discriminate between different levels of perceived chances of success. The second dimension determines how much entrepreneurs adjust their actions based on new information - a distinct aspect that cannot be captured by ambiguity aversion alone. Our theory suggests that entrepreneurs with different growth orientations have different ambiguity attitudes as compared to employees. Using incentivized measures from a large-scale survey, we find that incorporated entrepreneurs exhibit lower ambiguity aversion than employees, indicating that they are more willing to act under ambiguity. Distinctively, unincorporated self-employed individuals show higher ambiguity sensitivity, indicating that their actions are more responsive to changes in their beliefs. These patterns persist after controlling for risk attitudes, optimism, cognitive ability, and demographics. Our results highlight the distinct impacts of ambiguity aversion and ambiguity sensitivity on entrepreneurial actions. |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2603.14148 |