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Context and interpretation in laboratory experiments: The case of reciprocity

Maria Levati, Topi Miettinen and Birendra Rai ()

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2011, vol. 32, issue 5, 846-856

Abstract: The existing literature acknowledges that a mismatch between the experimenter’s and the subjects’ models of an experimental task can adversely affect the interpretation of data from laboratory experiments. We primarily focus on experiments designed to test a hypothesis by comparing behavior across two or more games and highlight the drawbacks of using a between-subjects design or a within subjects design. An alternative design for laboratory experiments is proposed which may alleviate this concern especially in studies of social preferences. We argue that the proposed design does not introduce any conceptual problems in addition to those that are already present in the between and within subjects designs and may alleviate some of the problems inherent to these designs in certain cases. We also use the proposed design to answer some questions that have attracted continued attention in the literature on social preferences in general and reciprocity in particular.

Keywords: Experimental design; Context; Trust game (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C90 D63 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Working Paper: Context and Interpretation in Laboratory Experiments: The Case of Reciprocity (2010) Downloads
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:32:y:2011:i:5:p:846-856

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2011.05.008

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