Research


Working Papers

Culture and Gender differences in honesty. 2023, with Caroline Graf and Andreas Pondorfer. (R&R, Economic Journal)

Gender differences in preferences play a crucial role for economic outcomes. This study explores the origins of gender differences in honesty preferences assessing the influence of innate traits versus social factors. Socialization emerges as pivotal. Across societies, gender differences in honesty are malleable; while women are more honest than men in Western societies, this is not the case in non-Western ones. This pattern is underpinned by social norms. In second-generation immigrant analyses, we provide evidence of the intergenerational transmission of gender-specific honesty norms. Lastly, gender differences in honesty norms evolve over time; they narrow as countries become wealthier.

How Social Structure Drives Innovation: Surname Diversity and Patents in U.S. History. 2023, with Max Posch and Joseph Henrich. (R&R, Journal of Political Economy).

We study whether interactions between individuals with different skills, expertise and perspectives influenced innovation in U.S. counties from 1850 to 1940. We introduce and validate a new measure of social interactional diversity based on the distribution of surnames: lower surname diversity indicates more concentrated social interactions among like-minded people. Leveraging quasi-random variation in counties' surname compositions---stemming from the interplay between historical fluctuations in immigration and local factors that attract immigrants---we find that surname diversity increases both the quantity and quality of innovation. The results support the view that social interactions between diverse minds are key drivers of innovation. Media: forbes

Kin-based Institutions and Economic Development. 2022, with Duman Bahrami-Rad, Jonathan Beauchamp, and Joseph Henrich. (R&R, Review of Economic Studies).

Kin-based institutions are the set of social norms governing descent, marriage, and post-marital residence. We establish a robust and economically significant negative association between the tightness and breadth of kin-based institutions---their kinship intensity---and economic development. To measure kinship intensity and economic development, we deploy genotypic measures and quantified ethnographic observations on kinship with data on satellite nighttime luminosity and regional GDP. Our results are robust to controlling for a suite of geographic and cultural variables and hold across countries, within countries at both the regional and ethnolinguistic levels, and within countries in a spatial regression discontinuity analysis. Considering potential mechanisms, we discuss evidence consistent with mediating roles for the division of labor, trust, institutions and innovation. 

Expanding the Remit of Psychology over Time and Space. 2024. with Mohammad Atari and Joseph Henrich. (R&R, Nature Human Behavior).

Psychology is a young science. Its definition and scope have shifted over the discipline’s short history. Here, we call for psychology to become a historical and geographical science. We list four underlying reasons as to why such a transformation, a chronospatial revolution, has yet to take off: problems in data, scope, synergy, and theory. We discuss the need for psychology to adopt a more holistic lens—one that incorporates the rich mosaic of shared history, the dynamism of cultural shifts, and the variations ingrained by ecology and cross-regional differences. Such an integrated approach not only enriches our microscopic understanding of Homo sapiens but also draws a more telescopic map of human psychology that encapsulates the human journey. 

Publications

Strategic Competition and Self-confidence. Management Science, 2024, with S. Brilon, S. Grassi, and M. Grieder.

The Behavioural Mechanisms of Voluntary Cooperation across culturally diverse societies: Evidence from the US, the UK, Morocco, and Turkey. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2023, with T. Weber, B. Beranek, F. Lambarraa-Lehnhardt and S. Gächter.

Social norms and dishonesty across societies. PNAS, 2022, 119 (31) e2120138119, with D. Aycinena, L. Rentschler, and Ben Beranek. 

Replication Data: click here.

Kin networks and institutional development. Economic Journal, 2022, 132(647), 2578-2613. 

Winner of the Royal Economic Society Prize for best paper Replication Data: click here

Selection into experiments: New evidence on the role of preferences, cognition, and recruitment protocols.  Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics,  2022, with  P. Thiemann, U. Sunde, and C. Thoeni. 

Reply to: Life and death decisions of autonomous vehicles.  Nature, 2020,  579, E3–E5, with  A. Edmond, S. Dsouza, R. Kim, J. Henrich, A. Shariff, J. Bonnefon, and I. Rahwan. 

The Church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation. Science, 2019, 366 (6466), with D. Bahrami-Rad, J. Beauchamp and J. Henrich.

Selected Media: Washington Post, Washington Post Opinion, Newsweek, The Economist, New York Times, Telegraph, NPR, Scientific American, Science Magazine, Science Podcast, FAZ I, FAZ II, NZZ, Focus, Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane TimeReplication Data: click here

Time pressure increases honesty in a sender-receiver deception game. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2019, 79, 93-99, with V. Capraro and D. Rand. 

The moral machine experiment. Nature, 2018,  563, 59-64,  with  A. Edmond, S. Dsouza, R. Kim, J. Henrich, A. Shariff, J. Bonnefon, and I. Rahwan.

Selected Media: The Economist, Washington Post, The New Yorker, BBC, The Guardian, Scientific America, WIRED, Spiegel, Le Monde

Nudging generosity: choice architecture and cognitive factors in charitable giving. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2018, 74, 139-145,  with P. Thiemann and C. Thöni.

Media: Third Sector

Intrinsic honesty and the prevalence of rule violations across societies. Nature, 2016, 531, 496-499,  with S. Gächter.

Selected Media: The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Science Magazine, Observer, Ars Technica, Spiegel. News and Views by Shaul Shalvi.

Overconfidence and career choice. PLoS ONE, 2015, 11(1), e0145126, with C. Thöni. 

Selected Media: The Independent, Real Clear Science, Vocativ, Bustle, The Boar, Mother Jones

Affect and fairness: Dictator games under cognitive load. Journal of Economic Psychology, 2014, 41, 77-87, with U. Fischbacher, C. Thöni and V. Utikal. 


Accepted pre-registered reports

The Cultural Prevalence of the Minimal Group Effect and its Relationship with two Forms of Real-World Bias (pre-registered report principally accepted at Nature Human Behavior) proposing author for the PSA with Kate Yang and Yarrow Dunham. More info here

Guilt- and Shame-Driven Prosociality Across Societies (pre-registered report principally accepted at Nature Human Behavior) with Catherine Molho, Ivan Soraperra, and Shaul Shalvi

Work in Progress

The Complementarity of Good Institutions and Voluntary Cooperation:  Experimental Evidence from 43 Societies with S. Gächter and C. Thöni  

Intuitive cooperation in children across societies with Y. Dunham, E. Mandelbaum, K. McAuliffe, and D. Rand