Social Norms, Expectations and Sanctions

Hindriks' paper raises two issues: one is formal and concerns the notion of 'cost' in rational choice accounts of norms; the other is substantial and concerns the role of expectations in the modification of payoffs. In this commentary I express some doubts and worries especially about the latter: What's so special with shared expectations? Why do they induce compliance with norms, if transgression is not associated with sanctions?

The Effect of Group Identity on Distributive Choice : Social Preference or Heuristic?

Group identity can influence significantly people's attitudes toward monetary allocations. In this paper we reassess the representation of group identity using social preference models. First, we show that the influence of group identity varies unsystematically across different types of mini-dictator games and cannot be described using a well-behaved preference function. Second, we demonstrate that the effect is not robust to slightly increasing the complexity of the task, suggesting that group identity is a framing effect that can be easily displaced by alternative decision heuristics

Précis of Understanding Institutions

Understanding Institutions offers a theory that is able to unify the two dominant approaches in the scientific and philosophical literature on institutions. Moreover, using the \u2018rules-in-equilibrium\u2019 theory, it tackles several ancient puzzles in the philosophy of social science

Epstein on Anchors and Grounds

The distinction between anchors and grounds is one of the most innovative contributions of The Ant Trap. In this commentary I will argue that the distinction suffers from an ambiguity between tokens and types. This leads Epstein to endorse pluralism about anchors and grounds, a position that is not justified in the book and to which there are plausible alternatives

A simple stress test of experimenter demand effects

As a stress test of experimenter demand effects, we run an experiment where subjects can physically destroy coupons awarded to them. About one subject out of three does. Giving money back to the experimenter is possible in a separate task but is more consistent with an experimenter demand effect than an explanation based on altruism towards the experimenter. A measure of sensitivity to social pressure helps predict destruction when social information is provided

Patient satisfaction and food waste in obstetrics and gynaecology wards

Introduction: Patient satisfaction is an indicator of healthcare quality, and expectation is an important determinant. A component of patient satisfaction is the quality of foodservice. An indicator of this quality is the food wasted by hospitalised patients. In the present study, we investigated patient satisfaction regarding food and foodservice, the expectation on food quality and the amount of food wasted in two obstetrics and gynaecology wards in Northern and Southern Italy. Patients and Methods: A questionnaire, including sociodemographic data, rate of food waste, expectations of food quality and characteristics of food and foodservice, was admini-strated to 550 inpatients in obstetrics and gynaecology wards (275 for each hospital). Univariate analysis was performed to describe the results, and multivariate analysis was carried out to control for sociodemographic data. Results: Northern patients were more satisfied with the quality of food (54.2% vs 36.0%) and foodservice (54.5% vs 38.2%) than southern patients. Northern patients had more positive expectations about the quality of food (69.5% vs 31.6%), whereas southern patients stated that they had no expectations. Southern patients gave more importance to mealtime (72.7% vs 26.2%), and many of them brought food from home to the hospital (30.2% vs 2.2%) through relatives who came to visit them. Southern patients discarded about 41.7% of food served, whereas northern patients discarded only about 15.3%. Discussion: Food waste is a worldwide problem due to its economic, social and environmental effects. Especially in hospitals, food waste could have a negative impact on the overall patient satisfaction

Artificiality, reactivity, and demand effects in experimental economics

A series of recent debates in experimental economics have associated demand effects with the artificiality of the experimental setting and have linked it to the problem of external validity. In this paper, we argue that these associations can be misleading, partly because of the ambiguity with which \u201cartificiality\u201d has been defined, but also because demand effects and external validity are related in complex ways. We argue that artificiality (understood as unfamiliarity of the experimental environment) may be directly as well as inversely correlated with demand effects. We also distinguish between the demand effects of experimentation and the reactions that they may trigger and that might endanger experimental validity. We conclude that economists should pay more attention to the way in which subjects construe the experimental task and learn to exploit subjects\u2019 reactivity to expectations in their experiments