Laboratory experiments:
-Behavioural experiments have become important in the empirical study of preferences. Part of the motivation for experiments is that understanding someone's motivations (altruism, reciprocity, inequality aversion as well as self interest) is essential to being able to predict how they will behave as employees, family members, custodians of the environment, and citizens.
-Experiments measure what people do rather than what they say
-When people behave differently in the experiment, it is likely due to differences in their preferences, not in the situation that each person faces
-Economists have discovered that the way people behave in experiments can be used to predict how they react in real-life situations