Are we nice(r) to nice(r) people?—An experimental analysis

Max Albert (), Werner Güth (), Erich Kirchler () and Boris Maciejovsky ()

Experimental Economics, 2007, vol. 10, issue 1, pages 53-69

Abstract: We experimentally investigate whether individuals can reliably detect cooperators (the nice(r) people) in an anonymous decision environment involving “connected games.†Participants can condition their choices in an asymmetric prisoners’ dilemma and a trust game on past individual (their partner’s donation share to a self-selected charity) and social (whether their partner belongs to a group with high or low average donations) information. Thus, the two measures of niceness are the individual donation share in the donation task, and the cooperativeness of one’s choice in the two games. We find that high donors achieve a higher-than-average expected payoff by cooperating predominantly with other high donors. Group affiliation proved to be irrelevant. Copyright Economic Science Association 2007

Keywords: Game theory; Conditional cooperation; Connected games; Donation behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10683-006-9131-3 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:expeco:v:10:y:2007:i:1:p:53-69

Access Statistics for this article

Experimental Economics is edited by Jordi Brandts and Timothy Cason

More articles in Experimental Economics from Springer
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().