Is generosity involuntary?

Theory and Decision, 2011

We study ultimatum and dictator variants of the generosity game. In this game, the first mover chooses the amount of money to be distributed between the players within a given interval, knowing that her own share is fixed. Thus, the first mover is not confronted with the typical trade-off between her own and the other's payoff. For each variant of the game, we study three treatments that vary the range of potential pie sizes so as to assess the influence of these changes on the first movers' generosity. We find that removing the trade-off inspires significant generosity, which is not always affected by the second mover's veto power. Moreover, the manipulation of the choice set indicates that choices are influenced by the available alternatives. Keywords Experiments • Ultimatum • Dictator • Social preferences JEL Classification C70 • C91 • D63 1 Introduction Laboratory and field evidence from ultimatum and dictator games indicates that people are not only motivated by material self-interest but also care positively or Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article

Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, 2018

This article attempts to explain the behaviour observed in the dictator game without explicitly assuming a utility function. Alternatively, I consider the repre- sentative behaviour of a society composed of heterogeneous individuals in terms of altruism and self-interest. Based on these two principles, I present an allocation that aggregates the society's preferences. The result depends crucially on the value of the resource under dispute for the dictator. Even if the value of the resource is extremely important for the dictator, the dictator cannot justify a share of the resource larger than 3/4 of the total. An allocation proposing more than this share of the resource cannot reach social consensus. On the other extreme, if the value of the resource is sufficiently unimportant for the society, an equal split of the resource emerges in the limit.

2009

In the typical dictator game, the majority of dictators choose to pass at least a portion of their endowment to recipients who are given no endowment. We modify the dictator game by giving the recipient an endowment. We then measure the impact of varying the recipient’s endowment on the amount passed by the dictator. As the recipient’s endowment increases, the majority of dictators decrease the amount passed and pass nothing when endowments are equalized. We conclude that in the typical dictator game most dictators pass because they care about the recipients who are given no endowments.

Experimental Economics, 2012

We investigate the external validity of giving in the dictator game by using the misdirected letter technique in a within-subject design. First, subjects participated in standard dictator games (double blind) conducted in labs in two different studies. Second, after four to five weeks (study 1) or two years (study 2), we delivered prepared letters to the same subjects. The envelopes and the contents of the letters were designed to create the impression that they were misdirected by the mail delivery service. The letters contained 10 Euros (20 Swiss Francs in study 2) corresponding to the endowment of the in-lab experiments. We observe in both studies that subjects who showed other-regarding behavior in the lab returned the misdirected letters more often than subjects giving nothing, suggesting that in-lab behavior is related to behavior in the field. Keywords Other-regarding preferences • Fairness • Dictator game • Behavioral game theory • External validity • Misdirected letter technique • Field experiment JEL Classification C91 • C93 • D03 • D63 • D64 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article

Games and Economic Behavior, 1996

We conduct double-anonymous dictator experiments to explore the role of altruism in motivating subjects' behavior. We vary the extent to which an anonymous recipient is deserving of aid and investigate its effect on the allocation of a fixed pie by student subjects. This is accomplished by including as treatments: (1) an anonymous student subject and (2) an established charity. We find that a significant increase in donations occurs when we increase the extent to which a donation goes to a recipient generally agreed to be "deserving." We conclude that subjects are rational in the way they incorporate fairness into their decisions.

2004

We used simple economic games to examine pro-social behavior and the lengths that people will take to avoid engaging in it. Over two studies, we found that about one-third of participants were willing to ‘‘exit’’ a $10 dictator game and take $9 instead. The exit option left the receiver nothing, but also ensured that the receiver never knew that a dictator game was to be played. Because most social utility models are defined over monetary outcomes, they cannot explain choosing the ($9, $0) exit outcome over the dominating $10 dictator game, since the game includes outcomes of ($10, $0) and ($9, $1). We also studied exiting using a ‘‘private’’ dictator game. In the private game, the receiver never knew about the game or from where any money was received. Gifts in this game were added innocuously to a payment for a separate task. Almost no dictators exited from the private game, indicating that receivers beliefs are the key factor in the decision to exit. When, as in the private game,...

Indian economic review, 2021

We conduct an experiment using sequential dictator games where two dictators give serially to a common recipient. In the treatment conditions, the second dictator knows the outcome in the first game and thus the endowment of the recipient. Across treatment conditions, we alter the mechanism that determines the recipient’s endowment by replacing the first game dictator by a disinterested third party or a computer. We find that a negative relationship exists between the endowment of the recipient and giving of the second dictator only when a human with self-interest performs the allocation in the first game. Additionally, we find some evidence that dictators in the second game give less than first game dictators and no significant difference in average second game dictator giving across conditions.

2009

We use modified dictator games in which the productivity of taking or giving is varied. Subjects have to decide which of the different games will be payoff relevant in the end. We can show that the behavior of dictators does not depend on the productivity of their gifts, but that their behavior is strongly influenced by the right to choose

2021

Offers in the Dictator game are considered altruistic behavior. Indicators of the need of the receiver like income or a specific request of the receiver influence proposers’ decisions, along with traits such as greed and altruism. We investigated the combination of these influences in 140 participants. A higher need by the receiver led to higher offers up to equal share demands unless reactance led to lower offers for high-income receivers. Correspondingly, low-income receivers got more money than other receivers if asking for little. Trait altruism led to higher offers, while trait greed led to lower offers in above equal share requests. We found exploratory unusually high offers in our paradigm, lower offers for women and for requests in general. The present findings strengthen the concept of a “benevolent” non-harming for anyone nature of narrow altruism, while supporting the concept of greed including the possibility of getting more at the expense of others. Additionally, the ro...

Economics Letters, 2013

This note presents results from modified dictator games in which the payoff-relevant game is either chosen randomly or by the recipients. We do not observe reciprocal behavior when recipients choose the game: Dictators do not condition their donations on the game chosen by recipients.