Tom Lane - Are you happy now? An experiment on cheating, social norms and well-being

The Brown Bag Seminar this week will be "Are you happy now? An experiment on cheating, social norms and well-being" by Tom Lane.  This replaces the previously advertised seminar by Hanna Fromell.

The seminar will take place from 1pm to 2pm in C05 Physics Building (lunch provided). 

Abstract: I will present the design for an experiment investigating the relationship between cheating and happiness. Subjects will play a die-rolling game in which they may have the opportunity to lie to raise their financial payoff. Their subjective long-term happiness will be elicited before the game, and their subjective immediate happiness will be elicited before and after. Using these measures, I can test whether happier individuals are more or less likely to cheat, and whether cheating makes people more or less happy than behaving honestly. A further treatment, in which cheating is not allowed, will test whether the existence of the opportunity to cheat has a positive or negative effect on happiness. I also consider a possible mechanism through which one’s behaviour can affect their happiness: norm-compliance. I will elicit subjects’ perceptions of the social appropriateness of behaviour in the cheating game, using the Krupka-Weber method, and will test whether acting in accordance with one’s perceived social norms predicts the happiness one takes from the game.