Main
Social Influence on Moral Judgements
(with Fabian Dvorak, Urs Fischbacher, and Katrin Schmelz)
Prepared for submission
Abstract: Sharing moral views in public exposes people to both positive and negative feedback - with social media platforms being the leading example. Here we experimentally demonstrate that such feedback induces strategic conformity in moral judgements. We present data from an interactive experiment showing that information about other people's moral preferences has a significant impact on people's moral judgements through two distinct channels: First, providing information about the moral choices of others induces intrinsic conformity, a shift in participants' moral preferences towards the majority judgement. Second, participants whose moral judgements are made public and evaluated by others strategically adopt the majority judgement to attract positive or avoid negative reactions. Our findings suggest that strategic conformity makes moral judgements look overly homogenous, which can act as a catalyst for the convergence of publicly stated moral views in a social network. This sheds light on how feedback mechanisms, implemented by social media platforms to maximise user engagement, contribute to the formation of moral echo chambers.
Presented at: FSB Research Seminar Innsbruck, EEA ESEM Meeting Rotterdam, ESA World Meeing Lyon, IAREP-SABE Nice, Spring Summit Innsbruck, briq Bonn, Tinbergen Institute Amsterdam, Nottingham, Konstanz
Peer Effects and Social Closeness
(with Simon Gächter and Silvia Sonderegger)
Working Paper in preparation
Abstract: This paper studies peer effects in a cooperation experiment under exogenously varied degrees of social closeness. Two principal forms of peer effects are considered - those induced by observing and those induced by being observed by a peer. Our results show that social closeness shapes cooperative behaviour in both. While the effect of being observed decreases with social closeness, the influence on observing peers increases. A key contribution of our study is the combination of a novel experimental design with structural equation modelling, which allows us to disentangle preference-based from belief-based channels. We interpret our findings through the lens of reputation and social learning mechanisms.
Presented at: ESA Osaka, FAEE Dijon, TIBER Tilburg, RExCon Moscow, IAREP-SABE, Nottingham, SABE, Konstanz, Bogotá EEC, Vienna, NoBeC U Pennsylvania (Poster), ESA Dijon, Essex CDEC, Spring Summit Innsbruck, MPI Berlin
Online Behaviour and Opinion Polarisation
(in preparation for the 2026/27 Job Market)
Data collection ongoing
Presented at: Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna, Nottingham
Misperceived Polarisation and Large-Scale Cooperation
(with Simon Gächter)
Data collection ongoing
Subjective Views, Objective Truths, and the Emergence of Pluralistic Ignorace
Pilot Data collected
Signaling, Collective Misperception, and Stigma in Mental Health Service Take-up
Design phase
Social Media and Mental Health: Signal Extraction and Naiveté
Design phase
Methodology and Replicability
Comparing Human-Only, AI-Assisted, and AI-Led Teams on Assessing Research Repro ducibility in Quantitative Social Science
(with Brodeur A., Valenta D., Marcoci A. et al)
R&R PNAS
Computational Reproducibility and Robustness of Empricial Economics and Political Science Research Between 2022 and 2023
(with Brodeur A., Mikola D., Cook N. et al)
R&R Nature
Assessing Robustness to Varying Clustering Methods and Samples in Ambuehl, Bernheim, and Lusardi (2022): Replication and Sensitivity Analysis
(with Chi Danh Dao, Guidon Fenig, and Jin Young Yoon)
I4R Discussion Paper Series No. 110
Predicting Reproducibility and Robustness
(with Institute For Replication)
Working Paper in preparation