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This paper reports on a laboratory experiment designed specifically to test the influence of national pride on tax honesty while using a physiological marker to observe emotional responses to patriotic priming. Participants were exposed to one of three framing videos before earning income in a real effort task and were given the chance to declare their taxable income. We find that psychological priming through exposure to symbols of Australian national pride and national identity had a positive effect on the level of tax compliance among Australian but not non-Australians. In addition, non-Australians report lower tax compliance ratios in the treatment groups than in the control group which may indicate an outgroup effect. When exploring the potential of a physiological marker of national pride we observe two different types of physiological responses to the activation and effects of national pride and its impact on tax compliance among Australians. Iconic images activate the parasympathetic nervous system while sports scenes activate the sympathetic nervous system, but both types of images and responses are positively associated with tax compliance. In addition, we find that non-Australians resident in the country for more than a year report a higher level of tax compliance, and that there are some similarities in heart rate variability (HRV) responses between Australian citizens born in the country and those born overseas who have been in Australia for a longer period. Overall, the results support the proposition that identifying with an ingroup at a national level is important for tax compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional football is a globalized game in which players are the most valuable assets for clubs. In this study, we explore the evolution of the football players’ transfer network among 21 European first leagues between the seasons 1996/1997 and 2015/2016. From a topological point of view, we show that this network achieved an upper limit expansion around season 2007/2008, thereafter becoming more connected and dense. Using a machine learning approach based on Self-Organizing Maps and Principal Component Analysis we confirm that European competitions, such as the UEFA Champions League or UEFA Europa League, are indeed a “money game” where the clubs with the highest transfer spending achieve better sportive performance. Some clubs’ transfer market activities also affect domestic performance. We conclude from our findings that the relationship between transfer spending and domestic or international sportive performance might lead to substantial inequality between clubs and leagues, while potentially creating a virtuous (vicious) circle in which these variables reinforce (weaken) each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted a framed field experiment to explore a situation where individuals have potentially competing social identities to understand how group identification and socialisation affect in-group favouritism and out-group discrimination. The Dictator Game and the Trust Game were conducted in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City on two groups of high school students with different backgrounds, i.e., French bilingual and monolingual (Vietnamese) students. We find strong evidence for the presence of these two phenomena: our micro-analysis of within- and between-school effects show that bilingual students exhibit higher discriminatory behaviour toward non-bilinguals within the same school than toward other bilinguals from a different school, implying that group identity is a key factor in the explanation of intergroup cooperation and competition., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Because sexual attraction is a key driver of human mate choice and reproduction, we descriptively assess relative sex differences in the level of attraction individuals expect in the aesthetic, resource, and personality characteristics of potential mates. As a novelty we explore how male and female sexual attractiveness preference changes across age, using a dataset comprising online survey data for over 7,000 respondents across a broad age distribution of individuals between 18 and 65 years. In general, we find that both males and females show similar distribution patterns in their preference responses, with statistically significant sex differences within most of the traits. On average, females rate age, education, intelligence, income, trust, and emotional connection around 9 to 14 points higher than males on our 0-100 scale range. Our relative importance analysis shows greater male priority for attractiveness and physical build, compared to females, relative to all other traits. Using multiple regression analysis, we find a consistent statistical sex difference (males relative to females) that decreases linearly with age for aesthetics, while the opposite is true for resources and personality, with females exhibiting a stronger relative preference, particularly in the younger aged cohort. Exploring non-linearity in sex difference with contour plots for intelligence and attractiveness across age (mediated by age) indicates that sex differences in attractiveness preferences are driven by the male cohort (particularly age 30 to 40) for those who care about the importance of age, while intelligence is driven by females caring relatively more about intelligence for those who see age as very important (age cohort 40 to 55). Overall, many of our results indicate distinct variations within sex at key life stages, which is consistent with theories of selection pressure. Moreover, results also align with theories of parental investment, the gender similarities hypothesis, and mutual mate choice-which speaks to the fact that the broader discipline of evolutionary mate choice research in humans still contains considerable scope for further inquiry towards a unified theory, particularly when exploring sex-difference across age., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Confidence in the health care system implies an expectation that sufficient and appropriate treatments will be provided if needed. The COVID-19 public health crisis is a significant, global, and (mostly) simultaneous test of the behavioral implications arising from this confidence. We explore whether populations reporting low levels of confidence in the health care system exhibit a stronger behavioral reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. We track the dynamic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across 38 European countries and 621 regions by employing a large dataset on human mobility generated between February 15 and June 5, 2020 and a broad range of contextual factors (e.g., deaths or policy implementations). Using a time-dynamic framework we find that societies with low levels of health care confidence initially exhibit a faster response with respect to staying home. However, this reaction plateaus sooner, and after the plateau it declines with greater magnitude than does the response from societies with high health care confidence. On the other hand, regions with higher confidence in the health care system are more likely to reduce mobility once the government mandates that its citizens are not to leave home except for essential trips, compared to those with lower health care system confidence. Regions with high trust in the government but low confidence in the health care system dramatically reduce their mobility, suggesting a correlation for trust in the state with respect to behavioral responses during a crisis., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Because the global shortage of blood and organ donors across all medical markets is a serious concern for health care provision, we aim in this study to better understand decisions (not) to participate in these two forms of medical donation, which can save or prolong another's life. Using unique responses from over 1,000 online survey respondents, we compare the reasons given for the donation decision given by blood and/or registered organ donors versus non-donors. To do so, we categorize responses based on five dimensions of language choice: egocentric (referring to self), social, moral, positively emotional, and negatively emotional. Our results reveal statistically significant differences between blood donors and non-donors in the use of all five categories. With respect to organ donation, we find statistically significant differences between donors and non-donors in the use of social, moral and positive emotional terms but not in the use of egocentric or negatively emotional justifications. Such results suggest that the 'gift of life' terminology used universally to market to potential blood and organ donors may only be relevant in the blood donation market and unlikely to incentivize or change organ donation behaviour., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

We explore the effects of the quantity of information on the tendency to contribute to crowdfunding campaigns. Using the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, we analyze the campaign descriptions and the performance of over 70,000 projects. We look empirically at the effect of information quantity (word count) on funding success (as measure by amount raised and number of backers). Within this empirical approach, we test whether an excessive amount of information will affect funding success. To do so, we test for the non-linearity (quadratic) effect of our independent variable (word count) using regression analysis. Consistent with the hypothesis that excess information will negatively affect funds raised and number of contributors, we observe a consistent U-shaped relationship between campaign text length and overall success which suggest that an optimal number of words exists within crowdfunding texts and that going over this point will reduce a project's chance of fundraising success.

As the public debate over stem cell research continues, the observable voting behaviour in Switzerland offers a unique opportunity to compare the voting behaviour of politicians with that of voters. By analysing the outcomes of a referendum on a liberal new bill regulating such research, we reveal an about 10 percentage point lower conditional probability of the bill being accepted by politicians than by voters. Whereas the behaviour of politicians is driven almost entirely by party affiliation, citizen votes are driven not only by party attachment but also by church attendance. Seldom or never attending church increases the probability of bill acceptance by over 15 percentage points, while supporting the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party instead of the Christian Democratic Party makes supporting the bill more likely for voters, suggesting that religious observance is important. The observance of these tendencies in Switzerland-an environment that promotes discussion through direct democratic rights-strongly suggests that citizens see the benefits of stem cell research., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The ultimatum bargaining game (UBG), a widely used method in experimental economics, clearly demonstrates that motives other than pure monetary reward play a role in human economic decision making. In this study, we explore the behaviour and physiological reactions of both responders and proposers in an ultimatum bargaining game using heart rate variability (HRV), a small and nonintrusive technology that allows observation of both sides of an interaction in a normal experimental economics laboratory environment. We find that low offers by a proposer cause signs of mental stress in both the proposer and the responder; that is, both exhibit high ratios of low to high frequency activity in the HRV spectrum.

Using a quasi-natural voting experiment encompassing a 160-year period (1848-2009) in Switzerland, we investigate whether a higher level of complexity leads to increased reliance on trusted parliamentary representatives. We find that when more referenda are held on the same day, constituents are more likely to refer to parliamentary recommendations when making their decisions. This finding holds true even when we narrow our focus to referenda with a relatively lower voter turnout on days on which more than one referendum is held. We also demonstrate that when constituents face a higher level of complexity, they follow the parliamentary recommendations rather than those of interest groups. "Viewed as a geometric figure, the ant's path is irregular, complex, hard to describe. But its complexity is really a complexity in the surface of the beach, not a complexity in the ant." ( [1] p. 51).