Do women behave more reciprocally than men? Gender differences in real effort dictator games

Matthias Heinz, Steffen Juranek and Holger A. Rau

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2012, vol. 83, issue 1, 105-110

Abstract: We analyze dictator allocation decisions in an experiment where the recipients have to earn the pot to be divided with a real-effort task. As the recipients move before the dictators, their effort decisions resemble the first move in a trust game. Depending on the recipients’ performance, the size of the pot is either high or low. We compare this real-effort treatment to a baseline treatment where the pot is a windfall gain and where a lottery determines the pot size. In the baseline treatment, reciprocity cannot play a role. We find that female dictators show reciprocity and decrease their taking-rates significantly in the real-effort treatment. This treatment effect is larger when female dictators make a decision on recipients who successfully generated a large pot compared to the case where the recipients performed poorly. By contrast, there is no treatment effect with male dictators, who generally exhibit more selfish behavior.

Keywords: C72; C91; Gender; Reciprocity; Dictator game; Real effort (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

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Working Paper: Do women behave more reciprocally than men? Gender differences in real effort dictator games (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:83:y:2012:i:1:p:105-110

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2011.06.015

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