Household reduction of gas consumption in the energy crisis is not explained by individual economic incentives.

In response to the disruption of gas supplies from Russia following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European politicians and public utilities appealed to citizens and customers to conserve natural gas. Moreover, they strengthened economic incentives for gas conservation. In fact, a substantial amount of natural gas was saved during the winter of 2022/23.

Behavioral market design.

When it comes to behavioral change, economic design and behavioral science are complements, not substitutes. Chater & Loewenstein give examples from policy design. In this commentary, I use examples, often from my own research, to show how behavioral insights inform the design of the rules that govern market transactions.

Behavioral Economics Interventions to Improve Medical Decision-Making.

Background: In medicine, a wide gap exists between the medical care that ought to be possible in the light of the current state of medical research and the care that is actually provided. Behavioral biases and noise are two major reasons for this.

Methods: We present the findings of a selective literature review and illustrate how interventions based on behavioral economics can help physicians make better decisions and thereby improve treatment outcomes.

Large but diminishing effects of climate action nudges under rising costs.

Behavioural public policy has received broad research attention, particularly in the domain of motivating pro-environmental behaviours. We investigate how far the efficacy of arguably one the most popular behavioural policy tools (green 'default change' nudges) depends on the associated cost. On the basis of a field study involving carbon offsets for over 30,000 flights booked by more than 11,000 airline customers, we show that green defaults have a large effect on voluntary climate action, even when several hundreds of Euros are at stake.

Focusing climate negotiations on a uniform common commitment can promote cooperation.

International cooperation on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, disarmament, or free trade needs to be negotiated. The success of such negotiations depends on how they are designed. In the context of international climate change policy, it has been proposed [e.

Trust in everyday life.

Although trust plays a pivotal role in many aspects of life, very little is known about the manifestation of trust and distrust in everyday life. In this work, we integrated several prior approaches to trust and investigated the prevalence and key determinants of trust (vs. distrust) in people's natural environments, using preregistered experience-sampling methodology.

Exposure to Hedione Increases Reciprocity in Humans.

Cooperation among unrelated humans is frequently regarded as a defining feature in the evolutionary success of our species. Whereas, much research has addressed the strategic and cognitive mechanisms that underlie cooperation, investigations into chemosensory processes have received very limited research attention. To bridge that gap, we build on recent research that has identified the chemically synthesized odorant Hedione (HED) as a ligand for the putative human pheromone receptor (VN1R1) expressed in the olfactory mucosa, and hypothesize that exposure to HED may increase reciprocity.

Similarity increases altruistic punishment in humans.

Humans are attracted to similar others. As a consequence, social networks are homogeneous in sociodemographic, intrapersonal, and other characteristics--a principle called homophily. Despite abundant evidence showing the importance of interpersonal similarity and homophily for human relationships, their behavioral correlates and cognitive foundations are poorly understood.

Is it all about the self? The effect of self-control depletion on ultimatum game proposers.

In the ultimatum-game, as in many real-life social exchange situations, the selfish motive to maximize own gains conflicts with fairness preferences. In the present study we manipulated the availability of cognitive-control resources for ultimatum-game proposers to test whether preference for fairness is a deliberative cognitive-controlled act or an automatic act. In two experiments we found that a shortage of cognitive control (ego depletion) led proposers in the ultimatum game (UG) to propose significantly more equal split offers than non-depleted proposers.

The agencies method for coalition formation in experimental games.

In society, power is often transferred to another person or group. A previous work studied the evolution of cooperation among robot players through a coalition formation game with a non-cooperative procedure of acceptance of an agency of another player. Motivated by this previous work, we conduct a laboratory experiment on finitely repeated three-person coalition formation games.