Institutions

The Research Priority Program Foundations of Human Social Behavior is a joint venture between different institutions including the Department of Economics, the Institut für Hermeneutik und Religionsphilosophie, theThe Zurich University Centre for Ethics, and the Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research.

In 2004 the University of Zurich initiated several research priority programs. One of these programs is dedicated to the foundations of human social behavior and focuses, in particular, on the sources and the consequences of altruistic behaviors. The program is led by Ernst Fehr in collaboration with six other principal investigators: Ingolf Dalferth, Todd Hare, Christian Ruff, Klaas Enno Stephan, Philippe Tobler, and Roberto Weber. The program has a strong interdisciplinary focus encompassing several disciplines including economics, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. Due to this interdisciplinary focus, considerable resources are devoted to studies in social neuroscience and neuroeconomics which examine social cognition and interaction with neuroscientific tools.