CEIS Tor Vergata

On behavioral decision and game theory

The behavioral approach in the sense of studying decision-making in the light of observed choice behavior has a long tradition in psychology. Psychologists, for instance, proposed the idea of forming self-generated aspiration levels long before bounded rationality and satisfying behavior became topics in economics and...

Psychological and computational evidence that merit is a constructed evaluative process

Merit is a foundational moral principle invoked to justify inequality between people, yet an individual’s productivity is shaped not only by their efforts but also their opportunities. How, then, do people construct merit judgements? Across four preregistered, incentivized studies with US-based samples (total N = 759),...

Behavioral control, personality and simulated trading performance among novice investors

Building on research linking personality to financial behavior and market participation (Brown & Taylor, 2014; Conlin et al., 2015), this study examines whether personality traits influence simulated trading performance and whether this influence operates through trading intensity. The analysis is based on 133 second-y...

The prospect of a fair outcome triggers prosocial behaviour in the Centipede Game

Human decision-making reflects not only material incentives, but also concern for others'gains and the ability to understand others. However, the extent to which sensitivity to fairness interacts with aspects of social cognition and affects sequential social interactions requires further understanding. Here, we address...

Economic Status and Decision-Making Behavior: The Cost of Cognitive Control

Economic poverty entails material deprivation and life unpredictability, imposing heavier external constraints on low-income individuals’ goal pursuit than on their higher-income counterparts. We hypothesized that relative economic disadvantage fosters situation-driven decision-making among lower-income groups, which c...

A Drift Process?