Consensus vs. Conformity in Mixed-Motive Games

Michael Naef and Alessandro Sontuoso ()
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Alessandro Sontuoso: Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University of Pennsylvania

No 2, PPE Working Papers from Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: A correlation between second-order beliefs and strategies – in social dilemmas – has been interpreted as evidence of guilt aversion (Charness and Dufwenberg [2006]). Ellingsen et al. [2010] hypothesize that such correlation might rather be due to consensus effects. Here we propose an additional explanation, conformity, which involves a similar belief-behavior correlation and we set out to tell these motivations apart by proposing a design such that: (i) we reduce the scope for guilt aversion by eliciting and transmitting beliefs about the behavior of other participants in the same role; (ii) we disentangle consensus from conformity by providing an exogenous variation in collective beliefs. The data show that consensus is present (and predominant) but is not the only force driving the belief-behavior correlation. In fact, we also observe “self-servingly conformist” behavior in that subjects choose to match their strategy to the transmitted information when it is in their interest to do so.

Keywords: conformist preferences; consensus effects; guilt aversion; social norms; trust; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-hpe
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Related works:
Working Paper: Conformist Preferences in Mixed-Motive Games (2015)
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