Special issue on "experimental economics and the social embedding of economic behaviour and cognition": Introductory article: The implication of social cognition for experimental economics

Can human social cognitive processes and social motives be grasped by the methods of experimental economics? Experimental studies of strategic cognition and social preferences contribute to our understanding of the social aspects of economic decisions making. Yet, papers in this issue argue that the social aspects of decision-making introduce several difficulties for interpreting the results of economic experiments. In particular, the laboratory is itself a social context, and in many respects a rather distinctive one, which raises questions of external validity. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.