Social Preferences, Behavioral Rules, and Response Times

This dissertation consists of five self-contained research papers that cover experimental studies on different economic topics. My research interests are mainly focused on two interrelated areas within economics. One area is concerned with inequality aversion and social preferences. The other area is more process-orientated and concerns behavioral rules and heuristics. Especially, the use of response times as process data is among my research interests. Chapters 1 and 2 cover topics from the former area, whereas the remaining three chapters contribute to the latter area. Chapter 1 concerns the role of performance curiosity which can trump inequality aversion and has been published under the title “Performance Curiosity” in the Journal of Economic Psychology. Chapter 2 presents a novel experiment analyzing prosocial behavior in a high-stakes setting. Chapter 3 shows that the reinforcement process can work as cognitive shortcut to apparent myopic best reply behavior and has been published under the title “The Reinforcement Heuristic in Normal Form Games” in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Chapter 4 demonstrates that behavior in Cournot oligopolies is codetermined by multiple behavioral rules. Chapter 5 establishes a consistent reduction in response times for complex decisions under cognitive load