Human behavior in competitive and informational environments: evidence from experimental and empirical analyses

This thesis uses experimental and empirical analyses to uncover behavioral insights about competitive and informational environments. The structure of this work consists of two parts.   The first part, comprising Chapters 1 and 2, examines the behavioral spillovers of competition on prosocial behavior. The existing literature highlights that the benefits of tournament incentives may come at the cost of undermining prosocial behavior. Yet, more recent evidence questioned the existence of such spillover effects, showing that not all competitive settings lead to the erosion of cooperation. Two central questions arise from this debate: (i) Why tournament incentives generate negative spillovers on cooperation decisions in some settings and not in others? (ii) Furthermore, because both competition and cooperation incentives yield desirable outcomes, can they be jointly implemented without efficiency losses? In the first two chapters of this dissertation, I address these questions, finding that spillovers are not driven by the nature of competition (unfair vs. fair competition), and that introducing prosocial signals within the competitive environment does not necessarily mitigate these negative spillovers.   The second part, presented in Chapter 3, establishes the groundwork for understanding emotional responses to misinformation, analyzing how the emotional content of information correlates with its accuracy. Digital platforms have transformed how information is produced and consumed, enabling false or misleading content to spread and shape individuals' and collective beliefs. One critical and underexplored factor is the emotional composition of misinformation. The results reveal that high emotional intensity and negativity are strongly associated with misinformation, with potential asymmetric partisans’ response.