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Overall, people want to behave ethically. In some cases, temptation steers them away from ethical behavior. In other cases, purely ethical behavior is not possible, because the same behavior entails both ethical and unethical consequences. For example, collaboration with others may require people to be dishonest. We suggest that to justify their choices in such cases, people engage in a moral calculus in which they consider ethical values and behaviors as moral currencies, which can be traded for each other. This view is consistent with previous accounts that highlight the licensing effect that ethical actions can have on subsequent unethical actions when ethical and unethical actions are temporally distant and independent from each other, and also with cases where the same action has both positive and negative ethical value. We highlight the case of corrupt collaboration, where people often forgo honesty in favor of self- and group-serving collaboration, as one where moral currencies provide a useful framework for analysis and generation of research questions.

Although dishonesty is often a social phenomenon, it is primarily studied in individual settings. However, people frequently collaborate and engage in mutual dishonest acts. We report the first meta-analysis on collaborative dishonesty, analyzing 87,771 decisions (21 behavioral tasks; k = 123; n

Experimental team games provide valuable data to help understand behavior in intergroup conflict. Past research employing team games suggests that individual participation in conflict is driven mostly by parochial cooperation, rather than outgroup spite. We argue that motives in conflict depend on whether conflict is framed and perceived at the group or individual level. In a controlled laboratory experiment, we manipulate perception of the conflict level by varying the framing of the conflict, keeping the objective strategic aspects of conflict fixed. While parochial cooperation is the main motivation under an individual frame (replicating prior results), outgroup spite emerges as an important motivation when conflict is perceived at the group level. Furthermore, under an individual frame intragroup communication and chronic prosociality are related only to parochial cooperation, but are similarly related to both parochial cooperation and outgroup spite under a group frame. We conclude that perceptions of conflict are crucial for understanding the motivations that guide individual behavior in intergroup conflict. While experimental team games naturally focus on the strategic aspects of conflict, it is possible to extend the experimental paradigm to incorporate the perception of conflict. We discuss how these insights shed new light on past results, and how they may inform future work.

We contribute to the pressing question of how organizational design influences corporate wrongdoing by studying different decision structures — simultaneous vs. sequential — in experimental coordination games. Participants can report private information honestly, or lie to increase their own, as well as the group’s, payoff. In simultaneous decision structures, all group members report at the same time, without information about the reports of others, whereas in sequential decision structures there is a first mover who decides first. We find that the presence of a first mover decreases dishonesty levels in repeated interactions (but not in one-shot settings). We argue that this effect is primarily driven by image concerns of decision leaders.

Bermúdez argues for rational framing effects based on normatively appropriate quasi-cyclical preferences. We suggest that this argument conflates preferences over specific outcomes with preferences over outcome aspects. Instead of implying quasi-cyclical preferences, framing affects decisions through standard economic trade-offs. Nonetheless, we demonstrate that framing can affect behavior through altering perceptions of particular outcome aspects when framing effects are not decomposable.

Significance Cooperation is key to well-functioning groups and societies. Rather than addressing high-cost cooperation involving giving money or time and effort, we examine social mindfulness—a form of interpersonal benevolence that requires basic perspective-taking and is aimed at leaving choice for others. Do societies differ in social mindfulness, and if so, does it matter? Here, we find not only considerable variation across 31 nations and regions but also an association between social mindfulness and countries’ performance on environmental protection. We conclude that something as small and concrete as interpersonal benevolence can be entwined with current and future issues of global importance., Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one’s location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost, social mindfulness typically entails small acts of attention or kindness. Even though fairly common, such low-cost cooperation has received little empirical attention. Measuring social mindfulness across 31 samples from industrialized countries and regions (n = 8,354), we found considerable variation. Among selected country-level variables, greater social mindfulness was most strongly associated with countries’ better general performance on environmental protection. Together, our findings contribute to the literature on prosociality by targeting the kind of everyday cooperation that is more focused on communicating benevolence than on providing material benefits.

The evolution of parochial altruism goes hand in hand with intergroup conflict. Helping other group members is evolutionary stable in the presence of an outside threat (Bowles et al., 2003; Guzman et al., 2007), and hostility toward other groups can evolve together with parochial altruism (Choi and Bowles, 2007; Bowles, 2008). Furthermore, group reputation fosters cooperation with fellow group members in times of conflict—even in an environment that does not foster cooperation in times of peace (Hugh-Jones and Zultan, 2013). Social scientists have long documented that intergroup conflict increases intragroup cooperation (Sumner, 1906; Williams, 1947; Simmel, 1955; Coser, 1956). Over a century ago, Sumner (1906) wrote that “the exigencies of war with outsiders are what makes peace inside.” Indeed, prosocial behaviors, such as volunteering and blood donations, increase during times of war or exposure to terror attacks (Schmiedeberg, 1942; Janis, 1951; Glynn et al., 2003; Penner et al., 2005; Steinberg and Rooney, 2005; Gneezy and Fessler, 2012; Berrebi and Yonah, 2016). This phenomenon can be reproduced in experimental settings, either under experimentally induced external threat to the group (Wright, 1943; Feshbach and Singer, 1957; Sherif, 1961, 1966; Burnstein and McRae, 1962; Hargreaves-Heap and Varoufakis, 2002), or in times of interstate conflict (Gneezy and Fessler, 2012). Democratic leaders are also apparently aware of this phenomenon, often dubbed the common enemy effect, as they are more likely to initiate interstate conflict at times of internal unrest or threatened leadership (Sirin, 2011). In this paper, we argue that outside threat has the capacity to both increase and decrease intragroup cooperation. We propose that the crucial psychological variable that determines the response to outside threat is the level at which threat is perceived and construed. Outside threat increases cooperation only if it menaces the group as a whole (Williams, 1947). As intergroup conflict poses a threat both to the group as a whole and to individual group members, the same threat can trigger different—and even opposing—responses, depending on how it is perceived. These perceptions are sensitive to the duration and intensity of the conflict, media coverage, and the salience of various aspects of intergroup conflict. This Perceived Target of Threat principle can be summed thus: individuals who perceive the group to be under threat help the group, whereas an individual who perceives himself to be under threat helps himself (Weisel and Zultan, 2016). In the following, we review empirical support for this principle and discuss its psychological antecedents.

Does the potential victim of dishonest behavior—a family or a bank, a pensioner or an insurance firm—affect the propensity to engage in such behavior? We investigate the effect of victim type—an individual person or an impersonal institution—on dishonest behavior and test whether it interacts with potential perpetrators' social value orientation (prosocial or proself). In a between-subjects design, we allowed experimental participants (N = 368) to misreport private information in order to increase (decrease) their profit (loss) at the expense of either another participant or the experimenter's budget. Both prosocials and proselfs engaged in dishonesty, but proselfs did so much more. Furthermore, prosocials reduced their dishonesty when the victim was another person, rather than an institution, but proselfs did not. A direct implication is that the dishonesty of prosocials may be curbed by increasing the salience of the adverse effect their dishonesty has on other individual people but that such interventions will not be effective for proselfs. In contrast with recent results, we did not find a general effect of increased dishonesty under a loss (vs. gain) frame.

People lie more when they work as a group rather than alone. However, do people suspect and morally evaluate groups and individuals differently when they are suspiciously successful? In four experiments, we examine whether (a) suspiciously successful individuals and groups are judged and punished differently and (b) individual group members are judged differently from the group as one unit. Results suggest that people suspect successful groups and individuals to the same extent. However, group members are less likely to be suspected, judged negatively, punished, and reported on, when they are judged as separate individuals compared with as a group. The findings demonstrate a bias in judgment of group members, stemming from the method of evaluation—holistic or separate. We suggest that in order to minimize bias when judging misconduct by a group, the moral evaluation and punishment of all group members should be considered simultaneously.

Korn et al. (1) present evidence that vaccination constitutes a “social contract.” In three controlled experiments, participants who chose to be vaccinated in an experimental vaccination game (I-Vax) (2, 3) reduced their generosity toward unvaccinated, but not toward vaccinated, others. This was the case regardless of group membership, which was operationalized using a minimal group paradigm. The authors acknowledge that the external validity of their results may be limited due to the use of minimal, rather than natural, groups (as in ref. 4), and the reliance on an experimental game, rather than on real vaccination choices/intentions, to model vaccination behavior. The potential lack of external validity is of particular concern in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the political climate in the United States. As vaccines … [↵][1]1Email: oriw{at}tauex.tau.ac.il. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

People are rather dishonest when working on collaborative tasks. We experimentally study whether this is driven by the collaborative situation or by mere exposure to dishonest norms. In the collaborative treatment, two participants in a pair receive a payoff (equal to the reported outcome) only if both report the same die-roll outcome. In the norm exposure treatment, participants receive the same information regarding their partner’s action as in the collaborative treatment, but receive payoffs based only on their own reports. We find that average dishonesty is similarly high with and without collaboration, but the frequency of dyads in which both players are honest is lower in collaboration than in the norm exposure setting.

In many conflict situations, defense is easier to mobilize than attack. However, a number of factors, namely, the initial endowments available to each side, the stakes of the conflict, the respective costs of defense and attack, and the way that conflict is framed and perceived, may make attacking more attractive than defending.

International audience; This manual describes z-Tree (fischbacher 2007) and oTree (chen et al. 2016) implementations of the paper-based Social Value Orientation Slider Measure (SVOSM) by murphy et al. (2011). The z-Tree implementation includes both discrete and continuous (slider-based) versions of the SVOSM; the oTree implementation uses a slider-based version of the SVOSM.

The way profits are divided within successful teams imposes different degrees of internal conflict. We experimentally examine how the level of internal conflict, and whether such conflict is transparent to other teams, affects teams' ability to compete vis-a-vis each other, and, consequently, market outcomes. Participants took part in a repeated Bertrand duopoly game between three-player teams which had either the same or different level of internal conflict (uniform vs. mixed). Profit division was either private-pay (high conflict; each member received her own asking price) or equal-pay (low conflict; profits were divided equally). We find that internal conflict leads to (tacit) coordination on high prices in uniform private-pay duopolies, but places private-pay teams at a competitive disadvantage in mixed duopolies. Competition is softened by transparency in uniform markets, but intensified in mixed markets. We propose an explanation of the results and discuss implications for managers and policy makers. (D43, L22, C92).

We experimentally test the social motives behind individual participation in intergroup conflict by manipulating the perceived target of threat—groups or individuals—and the symmetry of conflict. We find that behavior in conflict depends on whether one is harmed by actions perpetrated by the out-group, but not on one’s own influence on the outcome of the out-group. The perceived target of threat dramatically alters decisions to participate in conflict. When people perceive their group to be under threat, they are mobilized to do what is good for the group and contribute to the conflict. On the other hand, if people perceive to be personally under threat, they are driven to do what is good for themselves and withhold their contribution. The first phenomenon is attributed to group identity, possibly combined with a concern for social welfare. The second phenomenon is attributed to a novel victim effect. Another social motive—reciprocity—is ruled out by the data.

Tournaments represent an increasingly important component of organizational compensation systems. While prior research focused on fixed-prize tournaments where the prize to be awarded is set in advance, we introduce ‘output-dependent prizes’ where the tournament prize is endogenously determined by agents’ output—it is high when the output is high and low when the output is low. We show that tournaments with output-dependent prizes outperform fixed-prize tournaments and piece rates. A multi-agent experiment supports the theoretical result.

The way profits are divided within successful teams imposes different degrees of internal conflict. We experimentally examine how the level of internal conflict, and whether such conflict is transparent to other teams, affects teams' ability to compete vis-a-vis each other, and, consequently, market outcomes. Participants took part in a repeated Bertrand duopoly game between three-player teams which had either the same or different level of internal conflict (uniform vs. mixed). Profit division was either private-pay (high conflict; each member received her own asking price) or equal-pay (low conflict; profits were divided equally). We find that internal conflict leads to (tacit) coordination on high prices in uniform private-pay duopolies, but places private-pay teams at a competitive disadvantage in mixed duopolies. Competition is softened by transparency in uniform markets, but intensified in mixed markets. We propose an explanation of the results and discuss implications for managers and policy makers.

Costly individual participation in intergroup conflict can be motivated by ‘‘in-group love’’—a cooperative motivation to help the in-group, by ‘‘out-group hate’’—an aggressive or competitive motivation to hurt the out-group, or both. This study employed a recently developed game paradigm (Halevy, Bornstein, & Sagiv, 2008) designed specifically to distinguish between these two motives. The game was played repeatedly between two groups with three players in each group. In addition, we manipulated the payoff structure of the interaction that preceded the game such that half of the groups experienced peaceful coexistence and the other half experienced heightened conflict prior to the game. Enabling group members to express in-group love independently of out-group hate significantly reduced intergroup conflict. Group members strongly preferred to cooperate within their group, rather than to compete against the out-group for relative standing, even in the condition in which the repeated game was preceded by conflict. Although both ‘‘in-group love’’ and ‘‘out-group hate’’ somewhat diminished as the game continued (as players became more selfish), choices indicative of the former motivation were significantly more frequent than choices indicative of the latter throughout the interaction. We discuss the implications of these findings for conflict resolution. Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Every organization rests on some form of hierarchical structure. We experimentally study how different organizational reporting hierarchies influence dishonesty of group members. Group members repo...

Outgroup hate, in the context of intergroup conflict, can be expressed by harming the outgroup, but also by denying it help.Previous work established that this distinction---whether the externality on the outgroup is negative or positive---has an important effect on the likelihood of outgroup hate emerging as a motivation for individual participation in intergroup conflict.The current work uses a within-subject design to examine the behaviour of the same individuals in intergroup conflict with negative and positive externalities on the outgroup.Each participant made two choices, one for each type of externality, and the order was counter balanced.The main results are that(1) behaviour is fairly consistent across negative and positive externalities, i.e., the tendency to display outgroup hate by harming the outgroup is correlated with the tendency to display outgroup hate by avoiding to help the outgroup; (2) People are reluctant to harm the outgroup after being exposed to the opportunity to help it; (3) emph{Groupness}---the degree to which people care about their group and its well-being---is related to outgroup hate only when participants encounter the opportunity to harm the outgroup first (before they encounter the opportunity to help it). In this setting the relationship between groupness and outgroup hate spilled over to the subsequent interaction, where it was possible to help the outgroup. When the opportunity to help the outgroup was encountered first, groupness was not related to outgroup hate.

Cooperation is essential for completing tasks that individuals cannot accomplish alone. Whereas the benefits of cooperation are clear, little is known about its possible negative aspects. Introducing a novel sequential dyadic die-rolling paradigm, we show that collaborative settings provide fertile ground for the emergence of corruption. In the main experimental treatment the outcomes of the two players are perfectly aligned. Player A privately rolls a die, reports the result to player B, who then privately rolls and reports the result as well. Both players are paid the value of the reports if, and only if, they are identical (e.g., if both report 6, each earns €6). Because rolls are truly private, players can inflate their profit by misreporting the actual outcomes. Indeed, the proportion of reported doubles was 489% higher than the expected proportion assuming honesty, 48% higher than when individuals rolled and reported alone, and 96% higher than when lies only benefited the other player. Breaking the alignment in payoffs between player A and player B reduced the extent of brazen lying. Despite player B's central role in determining whether a double was reported, modifying the incentive structure of either player A or player B had nearly identical effects on the frequency of reported doubles. Our results highlight the role of collaboration-particularly on equal terms-in shaping corruption. These findings fit a functional perspective on morality. When facing opposing moral sentiments-to be honest vs. to join forces in collaboration-people often opt for engaging in corrupt collaboration.

Intergroup conflict encompasses a broad range of situations with moral relevance. Researchers at the intersection of social and moral psychology employ diverse methodologies, including surveys, moral dilemmas, economic games, and neuroimaging, to study how individuals think, feel, and act in intergroup moral encounters. We review recent research pertaining to four types of intergroup moral encounters: (a) value-expressive and identity-expressive endorsements of conflict-related actions and policies; (b) helping and harming ingroup and out-group members; (c) reacting to transgressions committed by in-group or out-group members; and (d) reacting to the suffering of in-group or out-group members. Overall, we explain how sacred values, social motives, group-based moral emotions, and the physiological processes underlying them, shape moral behavior in intergroup conflict.

We report on two studies investigating the motivations (“ingroup love” and “outgroup hate”) underlying individual participation in intergroup conflict between natural groups (fans of football clubs, supporters of political parties), by employing the Intergroup Prisoner's Dilemma Maximizing-Difference (IPD-MD) game. In this game group members can contribute to the ingroup (at a personal cost) and benefit ingroup members with or without harming members of an outgroup. Additionally, we devised a novel version of the IPD-MD in which the choice is between benefiting ingroup members with or without helping members of the outgroup. Our results show an overall reluctance to display outgroup hate by actively harming outgroup members, except when the outgroup was morality-based. More enmity between groups induced more outgroup hate only when it was operationalized as refraining from help., Highlights • We experimentally examine intergroup conflict between natural groups. • We compare behavior of groups with no/weak/strong enmity. • Outgroup hate could be expressed by harm or by help avoidance. • Enmity matters only for help avoidance, except when conflict is morality-based. • The stronger the enmity, the more people chose to avoid helping the outgroup.

We experimentally test the social motives behind individual participation in intergroup conflict by manipulating the framing and symmetry of conflict. We find that behavior in conflict depends on whether one is harmed by actions perpetrated by the out-group, but not on one's own influ- ence on the outcome of the out-group. The way in which this harm is presented and perceived dramatically alters participation decisions. When people perceive their group to be under threat, they are mobilized to do what is good for the group and contribute to the conflict. On the other hand, if people perceive to be personally under threat, they are driven to do what is good for themselves and withhold their contribution. The first phenomenon is attributed to group identity, possibly combined with a concern for social welfare. The second phenomenon is attributed to a novel victim effect. Another social motive-reciprocity-is ruled out by the data.

This manual describes a z-Tree (Fischbacher, 2007) implementation of the paper-based Social Vaule Orientation (SVO) Slider Measure by Murphy et al. (2011). Using the paper-based version instead of the slider-based version (as implemented on the SVO-Website) avoids server-traffic related delays we experienced in the latter implementation.

This manual describes a z-Tree (Fischbacher, 2007) implementation of the paper-based Social Vaule Orientation (SVO) Slider Measure by Murphy et al. (2011). Using the paper-based version instead of the slider-based version (as implemented on the SVO-Website) avoids server-traffic related delays we experienced in the latter implementation.

Tournaments represent an increasingly important component of organizational compensation systems. While prior research focused on fixed-prize tournaments, i.e., on tournaments where the prize or prize sum to be awarded is set in advance, we introduce a new type of tournament into the literature: premium incentives. While premium incentives, just like fixed-prize tournaments, are based on relative performance, the prize to be awarded is not set in advance but is a function of the firm's success: the prize is high if the firm is successful and low if it is not successful. Relying on a simple model of cost minimization, we are able to show that premium incentives outperform fixed-prize tournaments as well as piece rates. Our theoretical result is qualitatively confirmed by a controlled laboratory experiment and has important practical implications for the design of organizational incentive systems.

"Explaining human cooperation in large groups of non-kin is a major challenge to both rational choice theory and the theory of evolution. Recent research suggests that group cooperation can be explained by positing that cooperators can punish non-cooperators or cheaters. The experimental evidence comes from public goods games in which group members are fully informed about the behavior of all others and cheating occurs in full view. We demonstrate that under more realistic information conditions, where cheating is less obvious, punishment is much less effective in enforcing cooperation. Evidently, the explanatory power of punishment is constrained by the visibility of cheating."