The project will explore implications of the basic science for policy via a series of applied projects connecting naturally with the three themes. These will include: the determinants of consumer credit behaviour, the formation of social values, and strategies for evaluation of policies affecting health and safety. The research will integrate theoretical perspectives from multiple disciplines and utilize a wide range of complementary methodologies including: theoretical modeling of individuals, groups and complex systems, conceptual analysis; lab and field experiments and analysis of large data sets. The Network will promote high quality cross-disciplinary research and serve as a policy forum for understanding behaviour and behaviour change. We use an experiment to show that compliance to a cue by an authority is a powerful motivating mechanism. We do this in an experiment where there are direct orders or indirect cues to destroy half of another participant’s earnings at a cost to one’s own earnings. Depending on the experimental treatment, up to around 60-70% of participants decide to comply with the orders or cues being provided.This network project brings together economists, psychologists, computer and complexity scientists from three leading centres for behavioural social science at Nottigham, Warwick and UEA. This group will lead a research programme with two broad objectives: (1) to develop and test cross-disciplinary models of human behaviour and behaviour change and (2) to draw out their implications for the formulation and evaluation of public policy. Foundational research will focus on three inter-related themes: (1) understanding individual behaviour and behaviour change; (2) understanding social and interactive behaviour and (3) rethinking the foundations of policy analysis.

Laboratory economic experiment. The experiment was conducted at the University of East Anglia between January and March 2012 with 390 subjects. The participants were mostly undergraduate students (79%) while the remainder were postgraduate students. There were participants from 36 different nationalities while the majority of the subjects were British (54%). The mean age was 22 years old and 14.62% of the participants were economics students.12 The experiment was in paper and pencil.13 The instructions were as close as possible to those of Abbink and Herrmann (2011). The experiment employed a fictional currency, called Guilders, which was converted to pounds at the end of the experiment at the rate of £0.75 per Guilder. Each session lasted approximately 60 min and the subjects earned on average £8.14 (approximately 12.38 US dollars), including a show-up fee of £2.00. Earnings were paid privately and anonymously at the end of the experiment. Subjects were not allowed to participate in more than one session.