They Come To Play

Jeffrey Carpenter, Allison Liati and Brian Vickery
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Allison Liati: Middlebury College, USA, aliati@middlebury.edu
Brian Vickery: Middlebury College, USA, bvicker@middlebury.edu

Rationality and Society, 2010, vol. 22, issue 1, 83-102

Abstract: Our experiment challenges the standard, social preference, interpretation of choices in the double blind dictator game played in the lab without any context. We present treatments formulated to minimize the social preference reasons to give and, despite this, the allocations are identical to our replication of the standard double blind game, implying that altruism might be the wrong interpretation of giving. Instead, we hypothesize that giving might be driven by participants coming to the lab ready ‘to play’. The fact that there are strong correlations between participant responses to an attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder questionnaire and both the rate and level of giving provides direct support for the hypothesis that lab participants impulsively give money away. However, we also show that having players earn their endowments attenuates the bias.

Keywords: demand effect; dictator game; experiment; impulsivity; social preference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:22:y:2010:i:1:p:83-102

DOI: 10.1177/1043463109358486

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