Thoughts about the dictator and trust game

Julian Detemple

No 422, SAFE Working Paper Series from Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE

Abstract: Experiments are an important tool in economic research. However, it is unclear to which extent the control of experiments extends to the perceptions subjects form of such experimental decision situations. This paper is the first to explicitly elicit perceptions of the dictator and trust game and shows that there is substantial heterogeneity in how subjects perceive the same game. Moreover, game perceptions depend not only on the game itself but also on the order of games (i.e., the broader experimental context in which the game is embedded) and the subject herself. This highlights that the control of experiments does not necessarily extend to game perceptions. The paper also demonstrates that perceptions are correlated with game behavior and moderate the relationship between game behavior and field behavior, thereby underscoring the importance and relevance of game perceptions for economic research.

Keywords: dictator game; trust game; game perceptions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D01 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:safewp:297999

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4857010

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