Norms in the lab: Inexperienced versus experienced participants

Robert Schmidt, Christiane Schwieren and Alec N. Sproten

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2020, vol. 173, issue C, 239-255

Abstract: Using coordination games, we study whether social norm perception differs between inexperienced and experienced participants in economic laboratory experiments. We find substantial differences between the two groups, both regarding injunctive and descriptive social norms in the context of participation in lab experiments. By contrast, social norm perception for the context of daily life does not differ between the two groups. We therefore conclude that learning through experience is more important than selection effects for understanding differences between the two groups. We also conduct exploratory analyses on the relation between lab and field norms and find that behaving unsocial in an experiment is considered substantially more appropriate than in daily life. This appears inconsistent with the hypothesis that social preferences measured in lab experiments are inflated and indicates a distinction between revealed social preferences as measured commonly and the elicitation of normatively appropriate behavior.

Keywords: Laboratory experiments; Learning; Selection effects; Generalizability; Methodology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B40 C90 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: Norms in the lab: Inexperienced versus experienced participants (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:173:y:2020:i:c:p:239-255

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.03.003

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