The endogenous nature of the measurement of social preferences

John Smith

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Measures of preferences are primarily useful in that they are helpful in predicting behavior. We perform an experiment which demonstrates that the timing of the measurement of social preferences can affect such a measure. Researchers often measure social preferences by posing a series of dictator game allocation decisions; we use a particular technique, Social Value Orientation (SVO). We vary the order of the SVO measurement and a lager stakes dictator game. In our first study, we find that subjects with prosocial preferences act even more prosocially when the SVO measurement is administered first, whereas those with selfish preferences are unaffected by the order. In our second study we vary the order of the SVO measurement and a nonstandard dictator game. We do not find the effect found in the first study. This suggests that the effect found in the first study is driven by choices involving the size of surplus.

Keywords: experimental economics; social values; dictator game; social value orientation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D64 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-06-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-hpe, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/29173/1/MPRA_paper_29173.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/35078/1/MPRA_paper_35078.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/35082/1/MPRA_paper_35082.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/39996/2/MPRA_paper_39996.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The endogenous nature of the measurement of social preferences (2012)
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