Motivated Memory in Dictator Games

Charlotte Saucet () and Marie Claire Villeval ()
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Charlotte Saucet: Univ. Lyon, ENS de Lyon, GATE UMR5824, 93 Chemin des Mouilles, F-69130, Ecully, France.
Marie Claire Villeval: Univ Lyon, CNRS, GATE L-SE UMR 5824, F-69131 Ecully, France; IZA, Bonn, Germany

No 1804, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: The memory people have of their past behavior is one of the main sources of information about themselves. To study whether people retrieve their memory self-servingly in social encounters, we designed an experiment in which participants play binary dictator games and then have to recall the amounts allocated to the receivers. We find evidence of motivated memory through selective recalls: dictators remember more their altruistic than their selfish choices. A causal effect of the responsibility of decisions is identified, as the recall asymmetry disappears when options are selected randomly by the computer program. Incentivizing memory accuracy increases the percentage of dictators’ correct recalls only when they behaved altruistically. In contrast, there is no clear evidence of motivated memory through biased, i.e., overly optimistic recalls: dictators recall selectively but they do not bias strategically the direction and magnitude of these recalls.

Keywords: Motivated memory; selective recalls; self-image; dictator game; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D63 D64 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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