Comparative Thinking and Cognitive Engineering in Economic Interaction

Principal Investigators: Thomas Mussweiler, Axel Ockenfels

We will combine empirical methods and theorefical concepts from social cognition and behavioral economics to examine (a) how one of the most fundamental and ubiquitous mechanisms of human information processing - comparative thinking - influences judgment and economic behavior, and, by the same token, (b) whether comparative thinking in economic interaction can be systematically governed by priming techniques. In doing so, we will focus particularly on the determinants of trust, coordination and fairness, which also play an important role in other projects of the research group. Specifically, a first subproject will examine how comparative thinking influences trust by scrufinizing its effects on perceptions of tmstworthiness and tmsting behavior. A second subproject will examine how comparative thinking influences coordination and behavior under uncertainty in increasingly complex decision problems, starting with relatively simple judgment tasks and then adding social context with both exogenous uncertainty and endogenous uncertainty. A third subproject will examine how comparative thinking influences perceptions of fairness along with its concomitant behaviors. In all three domains, we will experimentally vary the core constituents of comparison, namely the comparison standard that is used and the comparison process that is carried out, by utilizing priming techniques. The improved understanding of comparative thinking in economic interaction will provide a sound 'cognitive' basis for economic engineering efforts as studied in this research group.