PhD defence N.A.S (Nourhan) Hassan

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation:

Why do people sometimes cooperate, trust strangers, or pay their taxes even when no one is watching? This thesis explores whether familiar proverbs can encourage people to make socially responsible decisions.
Proverbs are short sayings that people learn from family and society. They often express shared ideas about what is right and wrong. This research investigates whether reminding people of these sayings can influence their behavior.
To answer this question, I conducted three laboratory experiments. The first examined whether a proverb encouraging cooperation leads people to contribute more to a shared fund. The second studied whether a proverb about trustworthiness increases trust between strangers. The third investigated whether proverbs encouraging honesty improve tax reporting. Across all three studies, people who saw the relevant proverb behaved more cooperatively, trusted others more, or reported their income more honestly than those who did not.
The findings show that simple, familiar messages from a culture can encourage positive behavior without changing rewards, punishments, or people's freedom to choose. This suggests that governments and organizations could use culturally meaningful messages alongside existing policies to promote cooperation, trust, and honesty in a simple and inexpensive way.