Hi there! 👋

I am a data and behavioral scientist at the CEB, United Nations.

My research primarily focuses on the topics of cooperation, group decision-making, and social learning. To conduct my research, I employ methods from microeconomics, game theory, behavioral and experimental economics, agent-based modeling, and social choice theory.

Additionally, I am interested in software development related to experiments and data analysis and machine learning.

Public Profiles:

Github @aseyq
X/Twitter @aseyq
Bluesky @aseyq
Google Scholar Ali Seyhun Saral
ORCID 0000-0002-5523-5355

Experience & Education

CEB, United Nations

Data and Behavioral Scientist

2024 - Present

Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse

Postdoctoral Researcher

2022 - 2024

Unversity of Bologna

Postdoctoral Researcher

2021 - 2022

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Lab Manager

2018 - 2021

University of Trento

PhD in Economics and Management

2014 - 2019

Istanbul Bilgi University

M.Sc. in Economics & Lab Manager

2010 - 2014

Istanbul University

BA in Economics

2006 - 2010

Research

Publications

Reciprocity evolves more readily in competitive than cooperative socio-ecologies

with Angelo Romano and Carsten K. W. De Dreu

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2025)

Published
Paper
Multi-lab collaboration

Competition and moral behavior: A meta-analysis of forty-five crowd-sourced experimental designs

with C. Huber, A. Dreber, J. Huber, M. Johannesson, M. Kirchler, U. Weitzel, ... , F. Holzmeister

PNAS (2023)

Published
Paper
Review Paper

Direct and indirect reciprocity among individuals and groups

with Angelo Romano and Junhui Wu

Current Opinion in Psychology (2022)

Published
Paper

The stability of conditional cooperation: beliefs alone cannot explain the decline of cooperation in social dilemmas

with Luciano Andreozzi and Matteo Ploner

Scientific Reports (2020)

Published
Paper GitHub
Software Paper

zBrac—A multilanguage tool for z-Tree

with Anna Marie Schröter

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance (2019)

Published
Paper GitHub

Work in progress

Open and closed societies: six centuries of institutional change

with Marco Casari and Maurizio Lisciandro

Revise and Resubmit
Working Paper

To what extent is technical reasoning beneficial for cumulative cultural evolution?

with Paula Ibáñez De Aldecoa and Maxime Derex

In submission

Reciprocity in Dictator Games: An Experimental Study

with Luciano Andreozzi and Marco Faillo

CEEL Working Papers (2021)

In submission
Working Paper

Wisdom of crowds under social influence: a comparison of voting rules

with Annika Hennes

Writing paper

Generating representative preferences: An algorithm to enumerate root profiles

with Fatma Aslan, Sebastian Kanunzinger and Jochen Staudacher

Writing paper

The Evolution of cognitively appealing practices

with Manvir Singh, Antoine Jacquet, Haneul Jang, Maxime Derex

Writing Paper

Artificially Inspired: An experiment on AI's effects on creative skill enhancement

with Almudena Claasen, Piero Ronzani and Luca Verginer

Design stage

Projects & Software

Experiment Cookbook: A tutorial on oTree programming

with Austėja Kažemekaitytė

oTree is a Python-based framework for developing interactive experiments for behavioral and experimental economics.

In this online book, we provide a tutorial on oTree programming as well as a collection of recipes for common tasks and problems in oTree.

In addition, we provide some introduction to Python, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for those who are not familiar with these languages.

The book is currently in progress (delayed to January 2025). You can find the latest version of the book on the book's website.

Book

Experiment Cookbook

Book
You can find some other and retired software/packages for researchers on my GitHub page that I won't list here.

Teaching & Materials

Introduction to Python & Experiments with oTree International Max Planck Research Schools (IMPRS) Summer School 2023 Immenstaad, Germany
Games and Agents: Agent-Based Modeling Leiden University, Conflict and Cooperation Laboratory 2022 Leiden, Netherlands
Programming Experiments with oTree University of Erfurt 2021 Germany (Online)
R Programming for Mathematics University of Trento, Department of Economics and Management 2021 Trento, Italy
Version control with Git (Turkish) Ulusal Araştırma Verileri Sempozyumu 2021 Turkey (Online)
Programming Experiments with oTree Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2020 Bonn, Germany
Introduction to ggplot2 Judgement and Decision Making (JDMx) Workshop 2019 Trento, Italy
z-Tree Programming Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2018 Bonn, Germany
Game Theory (T.A.) Trento University 2017 Trento, Italy
z-Tree Programming (with Matteo Ploner) Ca' Foscari University 2017 Venice, Italy
Game Theory (T.A.) Istanbul Bilgi University 2013 Istanbul, Turkey
Advanced Microeconomics (T.A.) Istanbul Bilgi University 2012-2013 Istanbul, Turkey
Intermediate Microeconomics (T.A.) Istanbul Bilgi University 2012-2013 Istanbul, Turkey
z-Tree Programming Istanbul Bilgi University 2012, 2014, 2016 Istanbul, Turkey.

Contact

For your requests, comments, collaboration proposals or questions: seyhunsaral@gmail.com. You can also contact me via X/Twitter.