Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/46161 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 5475
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Social preference research has received considerable attention among economists in recent years. However, the empirical foundation of social preferences is largely based on laboratory experiments with self-selected students as participants. This is potentially problematic as students participating in experiments may behave systematically different than non-participating students or non-students. In this paper we empirically investigate whether laboratory experiments with student samples misrepresent the importance of social preferences. Our first study shows that students who exhibit stronger prosocial inclinations in an unrelated field donation are not more likely to participate in experiments. This suggests that self-selection of more prosocial students into experiments is not a major issue. Our second study compares behavior of students and the general population in a trust experiment. We find very similar behavioral patterns for the two groups. If anything, the level of reciprocation seems higher among non-students suggesting that results from student samples might be seen as a lower bound for the importance of prosocial behavior.
Subjects: 
methodology
selection
experiments
prosocial behavior
JEL: 
C90
D03
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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