How to prevent destruction – On the malleability of anti-social behavior

Julia Müller, Christiane Schwieren and Florian Spitzer

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2022, vol. 97, issue C

Abstract: Experimental evidence for anti-social preferences has been identified in studies employing economic destruction games; in these games, some subjects destroy other subjects’ incomes without receiving any material benefit, and they may even incur costs in doing so. Here, we study the robustness of this phenomenon. We introduce a four-player destruction game in which we vary the way the game is framed and the presence of an alternative task that is performed in parallel to the destruction game. In the baseline condition, where the game is framed in the spirit of previous destruction experiments and when no parallel activity is present, we observe a substantial amount of destruction. Our results indicate that including a parallel activity and framing the game to emphasize joint ownership of the item to be destroyed reduces destruction to almost zero. We conclude that the emergence of anti-social behavior can be prevented by appropriately changing the institutional environment.

Keywords: Anti-social behavior; Joy of destruction; Experiment; Framing; Boredom (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C72 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:97:y:2022:i:c:s2214804321001385

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2021.101798

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