Research

Motivations for Indirect Reciprocity: Good Deeds or Good People? (with Lionel Page & Vera te Velde)
Under review (download).

We investigate the leading motivations for indirect reciprocity by experimentally studying the role of type-based, intentions-based, and outcome-based preferences. We design a novel experimental setting in which participants can help other participants under varying probability of being seen by third parties. Those third-party observers can then reward participants based on both their history of helpful behavior and the observability of that behavior. Because good deeds done in public are often strategically motivated to build reputation, while only truly altruistic people help in private, we can identify whether indirect reciprocity is directed towards good deeds or good people. We find that indirect reciprocity towards an individual is influenced by their previous attempts to be helpful and their impact on others, but is surprisingly unaffected by the authenticity of past benevolent actions. That is, good deeds are rewarded regardless of whether these actions reflect true altruism or are likely a strategic play to encourage future reciprocal kindness. We discuss implications for theories of indirect reciprocity and sustained cooperation in large groups.

Competing Motivations: When More Incentives Lead To Less Effort
Working paper coming soon.

I propose a framework of competing motivations that suggests a weak incentive can diminish the appeal of a strong incentive. This occurs when their motivations interfere with one another, rather than simply adding up. Consequently, combining a strong and weak incentive scheme can be less effective than offering the strong incentive alone. I demonstrate this in two pre-registered experiments on MTurk CloudResearch (N = 2,517). In the first study, participants completed effort tasks incentivized with monetary rewards, charitable rewards, or both. Those motivated solely by monetary rewards completed 23% more tasks than participants offered the same monetary reward paired with a charitable incentive. In the second study, participants completed tasks incentivized with monetary rewards, a chance to win a gift card, or both. Participants offered both incentives did not perform better than those offered only monetary rewards; when accounting for heterogeneity in preferences for the gift card incentive, the combined incentive scheme resulted in significantly fewer tasks completed compared to those working only for monetary rewards. These findings support the competing motivations hypothesis and underscore the need to reconsider the conventional additive approach to incentive design.

It's Not You, It's Me: Prioritizing Personal Interactions Over General Helpfulness in Reciprocity (with Antonio Rosato & Vera te Velde)
Working paper coming soon. 

Reciprocal exchanges often occur against a backdrop of shared history: when deciding whether to return a favor, individuals draw on both how someone treated them and how that person treated others. Yet reciprocity research has largely examined direct and indirect reciprocity in isolation, and leading models—type-based, intentions-based, and reference-dependent preferences—make conflicting predictions when evaluating both interactions together. We fill this gap with a large-scale online experiment (N = 3,749), in which “Reciprocators” observed two one-shot allocations by a matched “Helper”—one affecting themselves and one affecting an anonymous third party—and then chose whether to help that same Helper. By controlling for payoffs and the Helper’s expectations of return, our design cleanly isolates the influence of direct versus indirect treatment. We find that although both interactions drive reciprocation, direct treatment carries roughly twice the weight of indirect treatment. These results demonstrate that no single existing model fully captures reciprocity in joint contexts, underscoring the need for an integrated framework. 

Identifying the Source of Warm Glow
Work in progress.

I investigate the interplay between the inherent cost of a prosocial activity and the feelings of personal satisfaction (often termed "warm glow") that arise from engaging in such behaviours. Using a 2×2 experimental design, participants are divided into groups working either 'for themselves' or 'for charity', undergoing tasks that are either 'easy' or 'hard'. The study is designed to test the hypothesis that participants working for charity will experience greater warm glow when they work on more difficult tasks.  

Substitutes or Complements: Field Experiment on Donating and Volunteering (with Christina Gravert &  Jacob Schjødt)
Work in progress. 

This field experiment investigates the effect of volunteering on future donation behaviour, aiming to understand if volunteering and donating are substitutes or complements.