Image of Rahwan, Zoe

Main Focus

  • Applied behavioural science, behavioural economics

  • Ethical decision making, including the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • The psychology of honesty, charitable giving, corruption, deliberate ignorance

  • Understanding the effects of experimenter usage of deception

  • Field experiments in government, business, fund-raising, development, etc.

  • Serious games (e.g. my-goodness.net)

Curriculum Vitae


  • 2019- : Research Scientist, Adaptive Rationality, MPIB
  • 2017-2019: Visiting Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
  • 2015-2018: Research Associate, London School of Economics
  • 2008-2015: Senior Manager - Economic Research, Policy Unit, Dubai Financial Services Authority (regulator of the Dubai International Financial Centre)

Selected Publications

  • Köbis, N.*, Rahwan, Z.*, Rilla, R., Supriyatno, B., Bersch, C., Ajaj, T.,  Bonnefon, J.-F.*, Rahwan, I.* (2025). Delegation to Artificial Intelligence can increase dishonest behaviour. Nature, 1-9. *Joint authors Full text
  • Burton, J. W., Lopez-Lopez, E., Hechtlinger, S., Rahwan, Z., Aeschbach, S., ... & Hertwig, R. (2024). How large language models can reshape collective intelligence. Nature human behaviour, 8(9), 1643-1655. Full text
  • Janis H Zickfeld, Karolina A Ścigała, Christian T Elbæk, ...Zoe Rahwan, ..., Panagiotis Mitkidis, Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content. Nature human behaviour 9, 169–187 (2025). Full text
  • Awad, E., Yoeli, E., Rahwan, I.*, & Rahwan, Z*. (2024). Heterogeneity in charitable giving preferences from over 2 million decisions worldwide. *Joint authors Preprint.
  • Rahwan, Z., Yoeli, E., & Fasolo, B. (2019). Heterogeneity in banker culture and its influence on dishonesty. Nature, 575(7782), 345-349. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1741-y
  • Full text
  • Rahwan, Z., Hauser, O. P., Kochanowska, E., & Fasolo, B. (2018). High stakes: A little more cheating, a lot less charity. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 152, 276–295. doi: 10.1016/j.jebo.2018.04.021
    Full text

Full Publication Record

Google Scholar page

Research Tools Developed

  • mygoodness
    A site for researching obstacles to 'effective altruism'.

  • deep empathy
    A site for used for building on a range of experiments regarding whether AI-generated images of disasters in local areas can evoke empathy for actual victims of disasters in far away places.

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