How laws affect the perception of norms: Empirical evidence from the lockdown.

Laws not only affect behavior due to changes in material payoffs, but they may also change the perception individuals have of social norms, either by shifting them directly or by providing information on these norms. Using detailed daily survey data and exploiting the introduction of lockdown measures in the UK in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, we provide causal evidence that the law drastically changed the perception of the norms regarding social distancing behaviors. We show that this effect of laws on perceived norms is mostly driven by an informational channel and that the intervention made perceptions of social norms converge to the actual prevalent norm.

Can We Commit Future Managers to Honesty?

In a competitive business environment, dishonesty can pay. Self-interested executives and managers can have incentive to shade the truth for personal gain. In response, the business community has considered how to commit these executives and managers to a higher ethical standard. The MBA Oath and the Dutch Bankers Oath are examples of such a commitment device. The question we test herein is whether the oath can be used as an effective form of ethics management for future executives/managers-who for our experiment we recruited from a leading French business school-by actually improving their honesty. Using a classic Sender-Receiver strategic game experiment, we reinforce professional identity by pre-selecting the group to which Receivers belong. This allows us to determine whether taking the oath deters lying among future managers. Our results suggest "yes and no." We observe that these future executives/managers who took a solemn honesty oath as a Sender were (a) significantly more likely to tell the truth when the lie was detrimental to the Receiver, but (b) were not more likely to tell the truth when the lie was mutually beneficial to both the Sender and Receiver. A joint product of our design is our ability to measure in-group bias in lying behavior in our population of subjects (comparing behavior of subjects in the same and different business schools). The experiment provides clear evidence of a lack of such bias.

Correction: Do truth-telling oaths improve honesty in crowd-working?

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244958.].

Do truth-telling oaths improve honesty in crowd-working?

This study explores whether an oath to honesty can reduce both shirking and lying among crowd-sourced internet workers. Using a classic coin-flip experiment, we first confirm that a substantial majority of Mechanical Turk workers both shirk and lie when reporting the number of heads flipped. We then demonstrate that lying can be reduced by first asking each worker to swear voluntarily on his or her honor to tell the truth in subsequent economic decisions. Even in this online, purely anonymous environment, the oath significantly reduced the percent of subjects telling "big" lies (by roughly 27%), but did not affect shirking. We also explore whether a truth-telling oath can be used as a screening device if implemented after decisions have been made. Conditional on flipping response, MTurk shirkers and workers who lied were significantly less likely to agree to an ex-post honesty oath. Our results suggest oaths may help elicit more truthful behavior, even in online crowd-sourced environments.

Dynamic effects of enforcement on cooperation.

In situations where social payoffs are not aligned with private incentives, enforcement with fines can be a way to sustain cooperation. In this paper we show, by the means of a laboratory experiment, that past fines can have an effect on current behavior even when no longer in force. We document two mechanisms: (i) Past fines affect directly individuals' future propensity to cooperate, and (ii) when fines for noncooperation are in place in the past, individuals experience higher levels of cooperation from partners and, consistent with indirect reciprocity motives, are in turn nicer toward others once these fines have been removed. This second mechanism is empirically prevalent and, in contrast with the first one, induces a snowball effect of past enforcement. Our results can inform the design of costly enforcement policies.

The out-of-my-league effect.

When taking into account the chances of success, strategic mating motivations do imply a bias not toward the most attractive individuals, but toward average or mildly attractive individuals, undermining the explanation of Maestripieri et al. at a fundamental level. This leaves open the possibility of alternative explanations and calls for a full-fledged explicit model of courtship behavior.

Fluid Intelligence and Cognitive Reflection in a Strategic Environment: Evidence from Dominance-Solvable Games.

Dominance solvability is one of the most straightforward solution concepts in game theory. It is based on two principles: dominance (according to which players always use their dominant strategy) and iterated dominance (according to which players always act as if others apply the principle of dominance). However, existing experimental evidence questions the empirical accuracy of dominance solvability. In this study, we study the relationships between the key facets of dominance solvability and two cognitive skills, cognitive reflection, and fluid intelligence. We provide evidence that the behaviors in accordance with dominance and one-step iterated dominance are both predicted by one's fluid intelligence rather than cognitive reflection. Individual cognitive skills, however, only explain a small fraction of the observed failure of dominance solvability. The accuracy of theoretical predictions on strategic decision making thus not only depends on individual cognitive characteristics, but also, perhaps more importantly, on the decision making environment itself.

Physicians' multitasking and incentives: empirical evidence from a natural experiment.

We analyse how physicians respond to contractual changes and incentives within a multitasking environment. In 1999 the Quebec government (Canada) introduced an optional mixed compensation (MC) system, combining a fixed per diem with a partial (relative to the traditional fee-for-service (FFS) system) fee for services provided. We combine panel survey and administrative data on Quebec physicians to evaluate the impact of this change in incentives on their practice choices. We highlight the differentiated impact of incentives on various dimensions of physician behaviour by considering a wide range of labour supply variables: time spent on seeing patients, time devoted to teaching, administrative tasks or research, as well as the volume of clinical services and average time per clinical service. Our results show that, on average, the reform induced physicians who changed from FFS to MC to reduce their volume of (billable) services by 6.15% and to reduce their hours of work spent on seeing patients by 2.57%. Their average time spent per service increased by 3.81%, suggesting a potential quality-quantity substitution. Also the reform induced these physicians to increase their time spent on teaching and administrative duties (tasks not remunerated under the fee-for-service system) by 7.9%.

Mineralogical changes of a well cement in various H2S-CO2(-brine) fluids at high pressure and temperature.

The reactivity of a crushed well cement in contact with (1) a brine with dissolved H2S-CO2; (2) a dry H2S-CO2 supercritical phase; (3) a two-phase fluid associating a brine with dissolved H2S-CO2 and a H2S-CO2 supercritical phase was investigated in batch experiments at 500 bar and 120, 200 degrees C. All of the experiments showed that following 15-60 days cement carbonation occurred. The H2S reactivity with cement is limited since it only transformed the ferrites (minor phases) by sulfidation. It appeared that the primary parameter controlling the degree of carbonation (i.e., the rate of calcium carbonates precipitation and CSH (Calcium Silicate Hydrates) decalcification) is the physical state of the fluid phase contacting the minerals. The carbonation degree is complete when the minerals contact at least the dry H2S-CO2 supercritical phase and partial when they contactthe brine with dissolved H2S-CO2. Aragonite (calcium carbonate polymorph) precipitated specifically within the dry H2S-CO2 supercritical phase. CSH cristallinity is improved by partial carbonation while CSH are amorphized by complete carbonation. However, the features evidenced in this study cannot be directly related to effective features of cement as a monolith. Further studies involving cement as a monolith are necessary to ascertain textural, petrophysical, and mechanical evolution of cement.