We invite you to a FAIR Seminar with Joël van der Weele. Joël is a Professor of Economic Psychology at the Center for Research in Experimental Economics and political Decision making (CREED) at the University of Amsterdam. His research is on diverse issues on the intersection between economics and psychology, using the tools of experimental economics and game theory.
Title: Giving as a self-control problem (Cristina Figueroa, Jantsje Mol & Ivan Soraperra)
Abstract: Social preferences fluctuate with situational emotions like anger and compassion. This creates a potential self-control problem, where a self in ‘cold’ state may seek commitment to influence the altruistic actions of a self in the ‘emotional’ state. We experimentally investigate such self-control problems by studying avoidance behavior as a commitment device. In our experiment, subjects face a charitable giving task and have to choose beforehand whether to watch one of several videos, which differ in their emotional content. We study the choice of video as a commitment device to affect giving, and develop a novel method to measure sophistication behind commitment choices. We find evidence that the selection of emotional content is partially driven by sophisticated emotional self-regulation.