The Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS)'s mission is to further the long tradition at UEA of using controlled laboratory and field experiments to study key questions in the social sciences, from foundational and methodological issues to applied research.

The centre was established in 2007 by the Faculty of Social Sciences. Together with our colleagues at the University of Nottingham and University of Warwick, we are founding members of the ESRC Network for Integrated Behavioural Science.

Researchers in CBESS are currently pursuing three main themes of research. 

• the Preferences and Cognition cluster asks fundamental questions about how humans form judgments about uncertainty and values
• the Competition and Strategic Reasoning cluster investigates how individuals anticipate and react to actions of others, and solve tensions between competitive and cooperative incentives
• the Behaviour and Institutions cluster studies how culture, society, and identity come together to influence how groups interact.