Introduction and Guide to the Volume

The origin and history of the (social) Preferences Network research project whose results are reported in the book is described. It is one of the research networks in the MacArthur Foundation style of MacArthur Economics Networks founded in 1993, and aimed to bring together economists, anthropologists, psychologists, and other behavioural scientists to develop systematically richer models of preferences according to which people take account of the effects of their actions on themselves and others, and in which the process determining outcomes matters as well as the outcomes themselves. Experimental economics played a large role in this particular network, which to start with was based on work (rooted in the logic of game theory) with undergraduate students, but then expanded into the crosscultural behavioural experiments project reported in the book. The chapter also presents a short outline of the structure of the volume.