Does Experience Affect Fairness, Reciprocity and Cooperation in Lab Experiments?

Vittorio Pelligra, Tommaso Reggiani () and T. Medda

Working Paper CRENoS from Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia

Abstract: One of the most common criticisms about the external validity of lab experiments in economics concerns the representativeness of participants usually considered in these studies. The ever-increasing number of experiments and the prevalent location of research centers in university campuses produced a peculiar category of subjects - Students with high level of laboratory experience built through repeated participations in experimental sessions. We investigate whether the experience accumulated in this way biases subjects' behaviour in a set of simple games widely used to study social preferences (Dictator Game, Ultimatum Game, Trust Game, and Prisoner's Dilemma Game). Our main finding shows that subjects with a high level of experience in lab experiments do not behave in a significantly different way from novices.

Keywords: lab experiment; External Validity; Experimental Methodology; Experience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cse, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hpe, nep-hrm and nep-soc
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cns:cnscwp:201610

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