Gender Effects in Dictator Game Giving: Under Voluntary Choice, Women Favour Female Recipients

Maximilian Baltrusch and Philipp Christoph Wichardt

No 7022, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Allowing for a voluntary choice of the recipient's gender in a dictator game (N = 508), we find that women show a substantial gender biase towards females. Adding a charity recipient to the possible choices, the charity becomes the primary recipient and overall transfers increase; yet, conditioning on transfers to fellow students the gender bias of women remains. The literature on cognitive dissonance (the feeling of distress once we act against our internalised values) emphasises the importance of voluntary choice for dissonance effects to take hold. Accordingly, we interpret our results as hinting at an important detail regarding the ongoing debate about gender differences in altruistic giving: primary differences may not be found in the amount of transfers made but rather in the choice of the beneficiary’s gender. .

Keywords: dictator game; gender differences; voluntary choice; charitable giving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gen and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7022

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