This month we saw several papers across our journals using economic games to understand cooperative and prosocial behavior.

Talbot Andrews and co-authors from Stony Brook University find that people make riskier contributions in public goods climate change games when catastrophic losses cannot be avoided otherwise. Read the story behind the paper here. (Nature Climate Change)

In a related paper that also uses public goods climate change games, Reuben Kline from Stony Brook University and collaborators show that participants with a pre-game advantage act more pro-socially, while those with a disadvantage act more selfishly, thus reducing the likelihood of cooperative success (Nature Human Behaviour).

Fadong Chen from Zhejiang University and Ian Krajbich from The Ohio State University find that in mini-dictator games pro-social people become more pro-social under time pressure, whereas selfish people do the opposite. (Nature Communications)

In more trends news, Nature Human Behaviour published several papers investigating the impacts of beliefs.

Jennifer Siegel from Oxford University and collaborators show that beliefs about the morality of badly behaved agents are more flexible than beliefs about the morality of well-behaved agents. Read the story behind the paper here. 

Jon Jachimowicz from Columbia Business School, Oliver Hauser from University of Exeter and their co-authors show that beliefs about whether community members value saving energy are more important than personal beliefs in promoting energy conservation. Read the story behind the paper here. 

Other research published this month:

Katherine Ricke from University of California San Diego and colleagues estimate the country-level social cost of carbon. Read the story behind the paper here. (Nature Climate Change)

Christina Demski from Cardiff University and collaborators find that national energy context and more general national indicators predict differences in public concern about energy security across 22 European countries and Israel. Read the story behind the paper here. (Nature Energy). 

Manuel Frondel and colleagues from RWI Leibniz show that reducing the inequity in cost burden for green electricity in Germany by abolishing industry exemptions increases consumer acceptance of these costs. Read the story behind the paper here. (Nature Energy)

Antonios Proestakis from the European Commission and co-authors conduct a a seven-week school-based field intervention and find that social-reward schemes are effective at increasing physical activity in preadolescents (Nature Human Behaviour)

Martin Gerlach and colleagues from Northwestern University use a data-driven approach to identify four distinct personality types across four large data sets. (Nature Human Behaviour)

Ann Sizemore from University of Pennsylvania and co-authors use applied topology to investigate the prevalence of knowledge gaps in toddler semantic feature networks. (Nature Human Behaviour).

Ashley Thomas from University of California, Irvine and colleagues find that toddlers prefer a puppet that wins a conflict against another puppet, but not when they win by force. (Nature Human Behaviour)

Rose O'Dea and co-authors from the University of New South Wales and Australian National University use a meta-analytic technique to test the greater variability hypothesis for gender differences in academic performance. Read the story behind the paper here. (Nature Communications)

Zhan-Ming Chen from Renmin University of China and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and collaborators develop a model that incorporates capital stock change in consumption-based accounting, which highlights the dynamics of fast-developing countries. (Nature Communications)