Dictators and Lying Dictators: An Experimental Investigation of Preference Based-Group Biases in Chinese and American Interactions

Aaron Berman, Saika Cer Askin, Shapeng Jiang, David Porter and Jason Shachat
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Aaron Berman: California Institute of Technology
Saika Cer Askin: Chapman University, Economic Science Institute
Shapeng Jiang: Wuhan University
David Porter: Chapman University, Economic Science Institute

Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute

Abstract: This study examines group-conditional generosity and behavior using students from Chapman University in the United States and Wuhan University in China. Participants make allocation decisions in either a standard Dictator Game (DG) or a Lying Dictator Game (LDG), where a privately reported die roll determines the allocation. We vary whether participants interact with members of their own or the other university community. The LDG game, through the possibility of plausible deniability, allows for the moderation of image concerns that potentially influence DG behavior. We complement these tasks with individual decision benchmarks that exclude the Receiver to control for group differences in lying aversion. We find no evidence of in-group favoritism in either the DG or LDG, although Chapman participants allocate more to in-group Receivers than doWuhan participants. Plausible deniability changes allocation distributions, but not in the predicted direction of lower generosity. The individual decision tasks show that private reporting behavior differs across the two samples and that introducing a Receiver shifts behavior in an other-regarding direction.

Keywords: In-group bias; Dictator game; Lying; Social image (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D63 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cna, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-spo
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chu:wpaper:25-12

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