This Registered Report examines urban-rural tensions in Sweden-a historically egalitarian, multi-party welfare state with strong geographical equalization schemes, making it a least-likely case for place-based resentment theories. Using an online survey experiment (n = 2,051), we measured resentment through perceptions of in-group and out-group, and by experimentally varying whether political statements came from rural or urban politicians. Rural respondents showed stronger in-group identification, greater place-based resentment, and more negative stereotypes of their out-group than urban respondents. However, we find no evidence of place-based bias-that is, that rural respondents are less receptive to urban politicians' statements, or vice versa. These findings reveal clear urban-rural tensions in a context often considered unlikely for such divides, underscoring the role of regional identities in political discourse and policy in multi-party welfare states beyond Anglo-Saxon settings, while indicating that these tensions do not translate into systematic bias in evaluating political statements.

 Background. During the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers appeared to shift toward more efficiency-oriented medical decision making as resources became increasingly scarce. However, it remains unclear whether this shift was driven by the experience of scarcity itself or by the use of more concretely formulated ethical principles. This study investigates whether a national crisis influences public support for health care priority setting principles, and whether abstract versus concrete formulations of these principles affect that support. Design. We conducted a pre-registered online experiment (n = 1,404) to examine public attitudes toward three ethical principles formalized in the Swedish ethical platform—human dignity, needs-solidarity, and cost-effectiveness—in both crisis and non-crisis contexts. We also manipulated how the principles were presented, using either abstract or concrete formulations. Results. In the crisis condition, support for the human dignity and cost-effectiveness principles decreased, while support for the needs-solidarity principle increased. However, these effects were small, and the overall ranking of the principles remained stable. Notably, the level of abstractness had a stronger impact than the crisis context: support for needs-solidarity was higher when described abstractly, whereas support for cost-effectiveness increased when it was presented in a more concrete, action-oriented way. Support for the human dignity principle was unaffected by the abstractness manipulation. Conclusion. The findings suggest that people’s moral views are relatively stable in the face of crisis. Rather than the crisis context itself, the way ethical principles are formulated—abstractly or concretely—may be a more powerful driver of shifts in public support for different moral values in health care priority setting.

Construal-level theory (CLT) proposes that psychological distance influences the level of abstraction at which somethingis mentally construed: Things perceived as less probable (likelihood) or further away from the here (spatial distance),now (temporal distance), or self (social distance) are thought about more abstractly. In this international multilab study,we tested four basic hypotheses derived from core assumptions of CLT and explore potential moderators and boundaryconditions of the effects. Participants (N = 11,775) from 27 countries and regions were randomly assigned to one of fourexperimental protocols focused on different types of psychological distance (temporal, spatial, social, or likelihood),and each experiment manipulated psychological distance (close vs. distant). The protocols for temporal distance (n =2,941) and spatial distance (n = 2,973) were direct replications of Liberman and Trope (Study 1) and Fujita et al. (Study1), respectively. The remaining two protocols were paradigmatic replications, applying to social distance (n = 2,926)and likelihood (n = 2,936). The effects of psychological distance on construal level for the four present studies were asfollows (positive effects are consistent with hypotheses): temporal, d = 0.08, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.003, 0.16](effect in original study: d = 0.92); spatial, d = 0.04, 95% CI = [−0.03, 0.11] (effect in original study: d = 0.55); social, d= −0.27, 95% CI = [−0.34, −0.19]; and likelihood, d = 0.03, 95% CI = [−0.05, 0.11]. Pretests indicated that valence andabstraction were confounded in response options on the outcome measure. Controlling for this confound eliminatedthe hypothesis-inconsistent effect of social distance, d = 0.006, 95% CI = [−0.05, 0.07]. These findings provide limitedevidence for the predictions of the theory and present a critical challenge for CLT.

 Voting is a cornerstone of democratic decision-making, but it may also diffuse individual responsibility, potentially encouraging people to support actions they would avoid when deciding alone. Such diffusion of responsibility could lead voters to prioritize relative standing over collective welfare, for example by endorsing policies that reduce others’ advantages even at a cost to overall efficiency. Across two experiments (total N = 1750), including a preregistered replication, we examined whether voting contributes to envy-driven behavior in distributive decisions. Participants made choices in redistribution games under three decision-making rules: individually, through majority voting, or, in Study 2, via a Random Dictator mechanism that involved group decision-making without majority rule. In both studies, voting contributed to a higher rate of envy-driven choices, in which participants sacrificed efficiency to reduce disadvantageous inequality. This effect replicated with nearly identical magnitude in the preregistered study and was strongest when the personal cost of acting enviously was low. Results from the Random Dictator condition indicated that group decision-making alone increased envy-driven behavior, consistent with diffusion of responsibility, while majority rule amplified this effect further. These findings suggest that collective decision-making can shift social preferences by diffusing personal responsibility, thereby fostering competitive motives rather than cooperative ones. This psychological mechanism helps explain why democratic decisions about redistribution may sometimes reflect relative concerns rather than collective welfare.

Are views on research ethics and questionable research practices discipline-specific? This study investigates attitudes toward research misconduct and questionable research practices (QRPs) among researchers (n = 11,050) and ethics reviewers (n = 144) across academic fields. Our findings indicate that while most questionable practices are viewed as unacceptable overall, attitudes vary systematically across fields. Medical researchers and ethics reviewers generally viewed questionable practices as less acceptable than researchers and reviewers in other fields. Female researchers and full professors also had stricter attitudes

The use of real monetary incentives has long defined experimental economics, setting it apart from disciplines like psychology, where hypothetical choices are common. While full-payment and hypothetical designs represent two clear extremes, random-payment incentive schemes - where one of several decisions is randomly selected for payment - have become a prominent approach in economics. Yet the behavioral validity of random-payment schemes remains underexamined: Do they more closely resemble fully incentivized tasks or hypothetical ones? We compare full-payment (participants paid for every decision), no-payment (participants not paid for any decision), and random-payment (participants paid for one randomly selected decision) incentive schemes, using five standard economic games to measure social preferences (Dictator Game, Ultimatum Game, Trust Game, Public Goods Game, and Prisoner's Dilemma). Results from Experiment 1 (n = 1,501), with 1 pound stakes, indicate no significant differences between incentive schemes in any of the games included or a composite measure of prosocial behavior. In Experiment 2 (n = 750), with 10 pound stakes, results were largely in line with Experiment 1, suggesting no consistent behavioral impact of incentive schemes at increased stakes. The one notable exception was responder behavior in the Ultimatum Game, where participants in the full-payment condition were less likely to reject offers compared to those in the no-payment condition, with random-payment falling in between. Our results challenge the rigid disciplinary norm that real stakes are essential for valid measurement and invite a more nuanced consideration of how and when different incentive schemes are necessary or appropriate in behavioral research.

The European Union’s Omnibus Pricing Directive mandates that traders disclose the lowest price offered in the previous 30 days, aiming to curb inflated reference prices and enhance consumer protection. We present an experimental test of this policy’s behavioural impact. In a pre-registered online experiment with 500 UK consumers (where the Directive is not yet implemented), we examined whether displaying a lower prior price (the “Omnibus Price”) affects willingness to buy, and whether this varies by product type or financial information avoidance. Across all goods, the Omnibus Price significantly reduced purchase intentions, with a larger effect for utilitarian than for hedonic products. No evidence was found that financial ignorance, measured via the Financial Homo Ignorans (FHI) scale, moderated the impact. Our findings provide a behavioural baseline for policymakers and suggest that mandated price transparency can meaningfully dampen consumer demand for products marketed with inflated reference prices.

Many disciplines rely on economic games to measure prosocial behavior. However, there is a concern that participants may misunderstand these games, complicating interpretation of results. This study combines online and laboratory data (total n = 1568) to assess subject comprehension of five standard economic games: the Dictator Game, Ultimatum Game, Trust Game, Public Goods Game, and Prisoner's Dilemma. The online and lab data collections are carried out separately and for the online data collection we collect data for two separate platforms (Prolific and CloudResearch's MTurk Toolkit). Within each data collection participants carry out all five games, and are randomized to comprehension questions with or without incentives for correct answers. Results indicate that misunderstanding is common: the proportion of participants who misunderstood ranged from 22 % (Dictator Game) to 70 % (Trust Game) in the online samples and from 22 % (Dictator Game) to 53 % (Public Goods Game) in the lab sample. Incentivizing the comprehension questions had no significant impact on misunderstanding, but numeracy was associated with lower misunderstanding. Misunderstanding also predicted increased prosocial behavior in several of the games. Our findings suggest that misunderstanding may be important in explaining prosocial behavior, making it more complicated to draw clear inferences about social preferences from experimental data.

How can people lead fulfilling lives both thanks to and despite the constant use of digital media and artificial intelligence? While the prevailing narrative often portrays these technologies as generally harmful to well-being, the reality is of course more nuanced—some individuals benefit, while others do not. Existing research has predominantly focused on the general consequences of digital media on well-being, with less attention given to the individual-level antecedents of digital well-being. In the present study, we aimed to identify the traits and characteristics of individuals who use digital tools in ways that promote their well-being. Using a large representative sample from Sweden (N = 1999), we explore how digital self-control, digital literacy (objective and subjective), and digital information ignorance predict digital well-being, life satisfaction, and social anxiety. Digital self-control and subjective digital literacy positively predicted digital well-being. Digital self-control also predicted greater life satisfaction. Finally, digital information ignorance predicted increased life satisfaction and social anxiety. Overall, the current study contributes to a growing literature on digital well-being by exploring its antecedents.

Decision fatigue is the idea that making decisions is mentally demanding and eventually leads to deteriorated decision quality. Many studies report results that appear consistent with decision fatigue. However, most of this evidence comes from observed sequential patterns using retrospective designs, without preregistration or external validation and with low precision in how decision fatigue is operationalized. Here we conducted an empirical test of decision fatigue using large-scale, high-resolution data on healthcare professionals’ medical judgments at a national telephone triage and medical advice service. This is a suitable setting for testing decision fatigue because the work is both hard and repetitive, yet qualified, and the variation in scheduling produced a setting where level of fatigue could be regarded as near random for some segments of the data. We hypothesized increased use of heuristics, more specifically convergence toward personal defaults in case judgments, and higher assigned urgency ratings with fatigue. We tested these hypotheses using one-sided Bayes Factors computed from underlying Bayesian generalized mixed models with random intercepts. The results consistently showed relative support for the statistical null hypothesis of no difference in decision-making depending on fatigue (BF0+ > 22 for all main tests). We thus found no evidence for decision fatigue. Whereas these results don’t preclude the existence of a weaker or more nuanced version of decision fatigue or more context-specific effects, they cast serious doubt on the empirical relevance of decision fatigue as a domain general effect for sequential decisions in healthcare and elsewhere.