The Good Behavior Game (Barrish, Saunders, & Wolf, 1969) has been demonstrated to be an effective group-oriented contingency technique to decrease disruptive classroom behaviors. Typically, competing groups of students play a game by following negatively worded rules to attain specified consequences. The present study investigated the effects of rules stated in positive terms in the Good Behavior Game format to increase appropriate classroom behaviors. A class of third grade students was divided into three teams to play the game. The flip of a coin determined daily conditions and the effects of the use of positive rules were compared to the effects of negative rules. A changing criterion, multielement research design revealed both conditions effective in increasing on-task behavior. No differential was shown. However, students did indicate a preference for positive rule game days. It was recommended that research be continued comparing positive and negative conditions to increase academic performance. / Department of Educational Psychology

Social economic decision-making considers the well-being and emotions of others. Unlike traditional economics which routinely assumes that individuals care only about their own outcomes, behavioral economics and neuroeconomics offer research strategies which help us explore our social motivations. This dissertation consists of three essays studying the underlying behavioral and neural mechanisms of individuals' social economic decision-making. The analyses focus on investigating experimentally how humans make decisions in three distinct social economic environments. Chapter 2 examines how individuals react to hold-up when explicit promises are available. Hold-up happens when two parties can form an incomplete contract to cooperate, but the agreement may fall apart due to concerns about the other party gaining bargaining power. We propose that a belief-dependent frustration anger model can explain behavior about investment, cooperation, and costly punishment in a hold-up environment. We show experimentally that communication improves cooperation and increases efficiency. Promises lead to cooperation, and broken promises lead to costly punishment. Chapter 3 explores threats' deterrence effect and credibility in an ultimatum bargaining environment where two parties can both benefit over trade but have a conflict of interests. We show that a belief-dependent frustration anger model captures the relationship among messages, beliefs, and behavior. Our design permits the observation of communicated threats, credibility, and deterrence. As we hypothesize, messages convey intention to punish the opponents (threats) changes players' expectations, that first movers are largely deterred by the threats and second movers' threats are credible. Threats lead to deterrence and greater propensity for costly punishment. Chapter 4 investigates the neural basis of individuals' charity donation behavior in a modified dictator game. The right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) has been associated with social decision-making, but the exact neural mechanism of charitable giving remains unknown. In our experiment, participants allocate money between themselves and a charity in a graphical revealed preference task, that measures both parameterized other-regarding preferences and economic rationality (Monotonicity, WARP, and GARP). We find evidence for a causal role of the rTPJ in determining fairness preferences and economic rationality. / Doctor of Philosophy / Social economic decision-making considers the well-being and emotions of others. Individuals engage in social economic decision-making on a daily basis, for example, negotiating over an offer, investing or cooperating on a project, bargaining over a purchase, or interacting with friends or strangers. Each of these decisions involves a variety of motivations including money for oneself, the well-being of others, each participants’ emotions and future relationships. Because of the complex nature of social economic decisions we need to employ an interdisciplinary research strategy. Behavioral economics applies psychological insights to economic problems and allows us to model the behavior of people who care about more than just money. Neuroeconomics integrates neuroscientific techniques and information about how the brain works to further expand our set of research tools. In this dissertation, we use all of these methods to explore how people make economic decisions in three distinct social scenarios. All three scenarios are especially intriguing since they represent different ways in which individuals integrate “others” into their own decision-making process. First, hold-up happens when two parties can form an incomplete agreement to cooperate and achieve higher efficiency together, however, the agreement may fall apart due to concerns about the other party gaining more bargaining power. In a historic example, Fisher Body had an exclusive supply agreement with General Motors. When the demand for cars increased sharply, Fisher Body held up General Motors by increasing prices. Second, negotiation is a situation where two parties can both benefit from trade, but they have conflicting interests. Third, individuals who engage in charity donations often sacrifice themselves monetarily to improve well-being of others. The scientific mission of this dissertation is to advance understanding of how individuals engage in social decision-making. In particular, we examine how communication (promises and threats) influences decision-making involving hold-up and negotiation respectively, and explore the neural mechanism governing altruism and charitable giving. We find evidence that communication enhances cooperation and efficiency in social economic decision-making through by changing expectations about monetary payoffs. In addition, we find evidence that the neural circuits responsible for fair-minded behavior also play a role in regulating economic rationality. This dissertation improves our understanding about how humans engage in social exchanges on both behavioral and neural levels.

This dissertation studies models of belief-dependent motivations in three essays.The first essay studies the Koszegi-Rabin model of reference-dependent preferences in a laboratory experiment. The propose a model where the reference point to which consumption outcomes are compared is endogenously determined as a function of lagged, probabilistic beliefs. This paper presents an experiment designed to test some predictions of the Koszegi-Rabin model. The experimental design controls for potential confounds suggested by their theory. The experimental results support their prediction of an endowment effect but do not show the attachment effect predicted by their model.The second essay, coauthored with Martin Dufwenberg and Matt Van Essen, studies how revenge may mitigate the hold-up problem from contract theory. When contracts are incomplete or unenforceable, inefficient levels of investment may occur due to hold-up. If individuals care for negative reciprocity these problems may be reduced, as revenge becomes a credible threat. However, negative reciprocity has this effect only when the investor holds the rights of control of the investment proceeds. We explore this issue analytically, deriving predictions for hold-up games which differ as regards assignment of rights of control. We also test and support these predictions in an experiment.Revenge may be driven by anger. The third essay proposes two belief-dependent models of anger: frustrated anger and anger from blame, which correspond to differing views of the emotion in the psychology literature. Both models build upon the idea that anger occurs when outcomes differ from players expectations. They differ in that anger from blame also incorporates updated beliefs and a notion of other-responsibility. The models are compared with each other and with existing models of negative reciprocity in several examples.