Reciprocity and Emotions when Reciprocators Know each other

Ernesto Reuben and Frans van Winden ()

No 1674, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This is an experimental study of a three-player power-to-take game where a take authority is matched with two responders. The game consists of two stages. In the first stage, the take authority decides how much of the endowment of each responder that is left after the second stage will be transferred to the take authority (the so-called take rate). In the second stage, each responder can react by destroying any part of his or her own endowment. Two treatments are considered: one in which all players are ‘strangers’ to each other (random matching), and one in which the responders know each other from outside the lab and are more or less close ‘friends’ (whereas the take-authority is again randomly selected). We focus on how the intensity of ties between responders impacts the decisions, beliefs, and emotions of both the responders and the take-authority. Some of our findings are: (1) although take rates are about the same, friends destroy more than strangers when faced with high take rates; (2) coordination on the same destruction level is stronger among friends; (3) the high level of coordination among friends can be explained by their emotional reaction towards one another; (4) the difference between the actual and expected take rate is a much better predictor of experienced emotions and destruction than the difference between the actual and (what is considered as) the fair take rate.

Keywords: reciprocity; social ties; emotions; expectations; experiment; friends; principal-agent relationship; appropriation; fairness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-pbe and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp1674.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Social ties and coordination on negative reciprocity: The role of affect (2008)
Working Paper: Reciprocity and Emotions when Reciprocators know each other (2004)
Working Paper: Social Ties and Coordination on Negative Reciprocity: The Role of Affect
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:ces:ceswps:_1674

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().