Cooperation of Pairs

Abstract

To examine the stability of prosocial behavior in groups and pairs, we use an indirect approach. We conducted linear public good experiments with two and four subjects repeatedly three times at intervals of one week. All experiments were carried out without providing feedback and used a payment mechanism promoting stable behavior. We study the dynamics of behavior in repeated sessions and find that pairs are much better at establishing and stabilizing cooperation than groups of four. Furthermore, we conducted all experiments in a partner and a stranger design. As is known from the literature, cooperation in a stranger design should be lower than in a partner design. Once again, we are interested in the differences of the strength of this cooperation reducing effect between pairs and groups. Unlike pairs, groups show very low contributions to the public good in the stranger treatment and display a strong tendency to decrease cooperation in the partner treatment. The results in all treatments demonstrate that decreasing cooperation is a stable pattern of behavior in dynamic social dilemma contexts. Finally, we conducted a norm elicitation experiment using a method introduced by Krupka and Weber (2013) and find that in pairs symmetric behavior plays a very important role.

Nudge for Good? Choice Defaults and Spillover Effects

“…Hypothesis 1 thus merely represents a necessary condition to investigate spillover effects from default induced giving in Dictator Stage I on giving in Dictator Stage II. Behavioral spillover effects in decision settings without choice defaults have been widely studied and the related literature on behavioral spillover effects from identical and closely related pro-social decisions points to the importance of moral licensing (e.g., Schmitz, forthcoming; Tiefenbeck et al, 2013; Hofmann et al, 2014; Achtziger et al, 2015; Effron and Conway, 2015; Sass et al, 2015). Individuals who give to others (or to charity) in a first decision tend to show less of this behavior in subsequent giving decisions.…”

Accounting for Changing Tastes: Approaches to Explaining Unstable Individual Preferences

“…In a series of further economic experiments where unstable preferences and increasing selfishness were observed, a moral self-licensing effect was put forward as an explanation (see WEIMANN, 2015a, 2015b;SASS, TIMME, and WEIMANN, 2015;SCHMITZ, 2015). The phenomenon of moral self-licensing is wellknown in the psychology literature (see MERRITT, EFFRON, and MONIN, 2010).…”