The Effect of Social Information in the Dictator Game with a Taking Option

Tanya O’Garra (), Valerio Capraro () and Praveen Kujal
Additional contact information
Tanya O’Garra: Middlesex University London
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Tanya O'Garra

Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute

Abstract: We experimentally study how redistribution choices are affected by positive and negative information regarding the behaviour of a previous participant in a dictator game with a taking option. We use the strategy method to identify behavioural ‘types’, and thus distinguish ‘conformists’ from ‘counter-conformists’, and unconditional choosers. Unconditional choosers make up the greatest proportion of types (about 80%) while only about 20% of subjects condition their responses to social information. We find that both conformity and counter-conformity are driven by a desire to be seen as moral (the ‘symbolization’ dimension of moral identity). The main difference is that, conformity is also driven by a sensitivity to what others think (‘attention to social comparison’). Unconditional giving (about 30% of players) on the other hand is mainly driven by the centrality of moral identity to the self (the ‘internalization' dimension of moral identity). Social information thus seems to mainly affect those who care about being seen to be moral. The direction of effect however depends on how sensitive one is to what others think.

Keywords: dictator game with ‘taking’; social information; conformity; anti-conformity; heterogeneity; redistribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D31 D64 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-neu
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_papers/271/

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:chu:wpaper:19-13

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Megan Luetje ().