The effects of endowment size and strategy method on third party punishment
Jillian Jordan (),
Katherine McAuliffe and
David Rand
Additional contact information
Jillian Jordan: Yale University
Katherine McAuliffe: Yale University
David Rand: Yale University
Experimental Economics, 2016, vol. 19, issue 4, No 4, 763 pages
Abstract:
Abstract Numerous experiments have shown that people often engage in third-party punishment (3PP) of selfish behavior. This evidence has been used to argue that people respond to selfishness with anger, and get utility from punishing those who mistreat others. Elements of the standard 3PP experimental design, however, allow alternative explanations: it has been argued that 3PP could be motivated by envy (as selfish dictators earn high payoffs), or could be influenced by the use of the strategy method (which is known to influence second-party punishment). Here we test these alternatives by varying the third party’s endowment and the use of the strategy method, and measuring punishment. We find that while third parties do report more envy when they have lower endowments, neither manipulation significantly affects punishment. We also show that punishment is associated with ratings of anger but not of envy. Thus, our results suggest that 3PP is not an artifact of self-focused envy or use of the strategy method. Instead, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that 3PP is motivated by anger.
Keywords: Cooperation; Norm-enforcement; Strategy method; Emotions; Fairness; Economic games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10683-015-9466-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:expeco:v:19:y:2016:i:4:d:10.1007_s10683-015-9466-8
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ry/journal/10683/PS2
DOI: 10.1007/s10683-015-9466-8
Access Statistics for this article
Experimental Economics is currently edited by David J. Cooper, Lata Gangadharan and Charles N. Noussair
More articles in Experimental Economics from Springer, Economic Science Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().