Social Comparisons and Reference Group Formation: Some Expermental Evidence

Ian McDonald (), Nikos Nikiforakis (), Nilss Olekalns and Hugh Sibly

No 1069, Department of Economics - Working Papers Series from The University of Melbourne

Abstract: We investigate reference group formation and the impact of social comparisons on ultimatum bargaining using a laboratory experiment. Three individuals compete in a real-e¤ort task for the role of the proposer in a three-player ultimatum game. The role of the responder is randomly allocated. The third individual receives a ?fixed payment - our treatment variable - and makes no decision. The existence of a non-responder has a dramatic e¤ect on bargaining outcomes. In the most extreme treatment, more than half of the o¤ers are rejected. Behavior shows individuals exhibit self-serving bias in the way they de?ne their reference groups.

Keywords: social comparisons; ultimatum bargaining; laboratory experiments; self-serving bias; real-e¤ort (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 C91 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-net
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/801137/1069.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Social comparisons and reference group formation: Some experimental evidence (2013)
Working Paper: Social comparisons and reference group formation: Some experimental evidence (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mlb:wpaper:1069

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Economics - Working Papers Series from The University of Melbourne Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 4th Floor, FBE Building, Level 4, 111 Barry Street. Victoria, 3010, Australia. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dandapani Lokanathan ().