Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/70170
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
Jena Economic Research Papers No. 2012,044
Publisher: 
Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena
Abstract: 
Traditionally, giving in dictator games was assumed to signal preferences over others' payoffs. To date, several studies find that dictator game giving breaks down under conditions designed to increase dictators' anonymity or if an option to take money obscures the purpose of the task. Giving is therefore argued to result from an experimenter demand effect. Here, we put this new interpretation to a stress test and find evidence that dictators mean to compensate the recipient for her vulnerable position in the game. Our results explain why giving decreases under specific conditions designed to increase anonymity and why the same individual may signal very different other-regarding preferences across different rules and/or roles of a game (Blanco et al. 2011).
Subjects: 
altruism
dictator games
moral preferences
experimenter demand effect
JEL: 
C91
D63
D64
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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