Support for a right-wing populist party and subjective well-being: Experimental and survey evidence from Germany.

With the rise of populism in many countries, including Germany, it is more important than ever to better understand the causes and consequences of populist support. Using two experiments within the context of a large panel survey, we study how support for the German right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is associated with subjective perceptions of personal and financial well-being. In both experiments, we rely on priming the identity of AfD supporters, once in a controlled manner and once in a natural setting. We document a causal relationship from AfD support to diminished well-being for new and marginal AfD supporters. Our findings challenge the prevailing assumption that causality moves unidirectionally, from life dissatisfaction to support for populist parties, and suggest that early interventions focusing on positive messages are particularly promising to win voters back into the mainstream.

Voluntary 'donations' versus reward-oriented 'contributions': two experiments on framing in funding mechanisms.

In an artefactual field experiment, we implemented a crowdfunding campaign for an institute's summer party and compared donation and contribution framings. We found that the use of the word 'donation' generated higher revenue than the use of 'contribution.' While the individuals receiving the donation framing gave substantially larger amounts, those receiving the contribution framing responded more strongly to reward thresholds and suggestions. An additional survey experiment on MTurk indicated that the term 'donation' triggers more positive emotional responses and that emotions are highly correlated with giving. It appears that making a donation is perceived as a more voluntary act and is thus more successful at generating warm glow than making a contribution. We surmise that this extends to other funding mechanisms. Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10683-022-09759-6.

Payoff information hampers the evolution of cooperation.

Human cooperation has been explained through rationality as well as heuristics-based models. Both model classes share the feature that knowledge of payoff functions is weakly beneficial for the emergence of cooperation. Here, we present experimental evidence to the contrary. We let human subjects interact in a competitive environment and find that, in the long run, access to information about own payoffs leads to less cooperative behaviour. In the short run subjects use naive learning heuristics that get replaced by better adapted heuristics in the long run. With more payoff information subjects are less likely to switch to pro-cooperative heuristics. The results call for the development of two-tier models for the evolution of cooperation.

Testing consumer theory: evidence from a natural field experiment.

We present evidence from a natural field experiment designed to shed light on whether individual behavior is consistent with a neoclassical model of utility maximization subject to budget constraints. We do this through the lens of a field experiment on charitable giving. We find that the behavior of at least 80% of individuals, on both the extensive and intensive margins, can be rationalized within a standard neoclassical choice model in which individuals have preferences, defined over own consumption and their contribution towards the charitable good, satisfying the axioms of revealed preference.

Automatic imitation in a strategic context: players of rock-paper-scissors imitate opponents' gestures.

A compelling body of evidence indicates that observing a task-irrelevant action makes the execution of that action more likely. However, it remains unclear whether this 'automatic imitation' effect is indeed automatic or whether the imitative action is voluntary. The present study tested the automaticity of automatic imitation by asking whether it occurs in a strategic context where it reduces payoffs. Participants were required to play rock-paper-scissors, with the aim of achieving as many wins as possible, while either one or both players were blindfolded. While the frequency of draws in the blind-blind condition was precisely that expected at chance, the frequency of draws in the blind-sighted condition was significantly elevated. Specifically, the execution of either a rock or scissors gesture by the blind player was predictive of an imitative response by the sighted player. That automatic imitation emerges in a context where imitation reduces payoffs accords with its 'automatic' description, and implies that these effects are more akin to involuntary than to voluntary actions. These data represent the first evidence of automatic imitation in a strategic context, and challenge the abstraction from physical aspects of social interaction typical in economic and game theory.

Zero-knowledge cooperation in dilemma games.

We consider a very simple adaptive rule that induces cooperative behavior in a large class of dilemma games. The rule has a Pavlovian flavor and can be described as win-continue, lose-reverse. It assumes no knowledge about the underlying structure of the environment (the "rules of the game") and requires very little cognitive effort. Both features make it an appealing candidate for explaining the emergence of cooperative behavior in non-human species.