Human Behavior & Cooperation
Why and when people cooperate, trust others, act honestly and follow moral norms.
University of Milano-Bicocca
Valerio Capraro
Associate Professor of Psychology
I study how people make decisions, cooperate and respond to social and moral dilemmas. My work brings together psychology, behavioural economics, language and artificial intelligence.
Research Interests
What I work on
Trained first as a mathematician, I later turned to the social sciences to study social and moral conflicts. My research looks at cooperation, altruism, trust, honesty and moral choices — prosocial behaviours that I see as foundations of a better society, because they maximise long-term benefits and minimise long-term costs. More recently, I have focused on how language shapes behaviour, on language-based models of decision-making and on what large language models can tell us about human choices.
Language & Behavioral Economics
How the words used to describe a choice shape decisions, beyond monetary outcomes.
Artificial Intelligence & Society
How large language models can help study and predict human behaviour, and what biases they carry.
Research output
Selected Publications
- 2024
Capraro V, Halpern JY, Perc M (2024). From outcome-based to language-based preferences. Journal of Economic Literature, 62, 115–154.
- 2023
Pizziol V, Demaj X, Di Paolo R, Capraro V (2023). Political ideology and generosity around the globe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120, e2219676120.
- 2025
Capraro V, Di Paolo R, Pizziol V (2025). A publicly available benchmark for assessing Large Language Models' ability to predict how humans balance self-interest and the interest of others. Scientific Reports, 15, 21428.
- 2025
Capraro V (2025). Human behaviour through a LENS: How Linguistic content triggers Emotions and Norms and determines Strategy choice. Current Opinion in Psychology, 102024.
Placeholder cover
The Economics of Language: How Large Language Models Can Reshape Behavioural Economics
Valerio Capraro
Featured Book
The Economics of Language: How Large Language Models Can Reshape Behavioural Economics
Valerio Capraro · Cambridge University Press · 2026
The book examines how language shapes economic decisions and how large language models can help study and predict human behaviour. It introduces the LENS framework and connects behavioural economics with recent advances in artificial intelligence.
Discover More
Lab
Working together
Valerio Capraro works with students and collaborators on experiments and studies about cooperation, morality, language and artificial intelligence.
Speaking
Talks, lectures, public events and podcasts
For talks, academic lectures, public events and podcasts, please send a short description of the invitation.
Send an invitation