Tradeoffs between Self-interest and Other-Regarding Preferences Cause Willpower Depletion

Hanna Fromell, Daniele Nosenzo and Trudy Owens

No 2014-14, Discussion Papers from The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham

Abstract: In this paper we show that making choices that involve conflicts between self-interest and otherregarding concerns may deplete cognitive resources and willpower and thus reduce individuals' ability to exert self-control. In a lab experiment we use a series of modified dictator games to manipulate whether subjects are exposed to tradeoffs between their self-interest and the interest of others: in a Conflict treatment the option that maximizes the dictator's payoff always minimizes the recipient's payoff, whereas in the NoConflict treatment dictator’s and recipient’s payoffs are aligned. We then measure how decision-making in the dictator games affects subjects’ performance in a subsequent and unrelated task that requires exertion of willpower. We find that subjects in the Conflict treatment perform significantly worse than those in NoConflict. This effect is particularly marked for dictators who experienced a stronger conflict during the dictator games.

Keywords: other-regarding preferences; willpower; self-control; depletion; dictator game; Stroop task. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cedex/documents/paper ... on-paper-2018-13.pdf Revised Version, November 2018 (application/pdf)

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:not:notcdx:2014-14

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham School of Economics University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jose V Guinot Saporta ().