Let me sleep on it: Delay reduces rejection rates in ultimatum games

Grimm, Veronika; Mengel, Friederike

doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2011.01.025

Cited by 120 publications

(88 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…This could explain why more cognitively reflected participants are more altruistic. Indeed, there is some experimental evidence that delayed/slower decisions imply less negative reciprocity (Grimm and Mengel, 2011;Oechssler et al, 2015) and more altruism (Piovesan and Wengstroem, 2009) and sometimes also cooperative behaviour (Rand et al, 2012), even though the latter has not been put in doubt by Tinghoeg et al (2013) or Recalde et al (2014). Since we only find the effect for altruism and since the link between cognitive reflection and response times seems less than clear (Grossman et al, 2014;Recalde et al, 2014), we do not want to push this interpretation too much.…”

Section: Selectioncontrasting

confidence: 39%

Identity, homophily and in-group bias

Currarini

Mengel

2016

European Economic Review

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a b s t r a c tMany instances of social interaction display either or both of the following well-documented phenomena. People tend to interact with similar others (homophily). They also tend to treat others of shared social identity more favorably (in-group bias). While both phenomena involve some degree of discrimination towards others, a systematic study of their relations and interplay is yet missing. In this paper we report the findings of an experiment designed to address this issue. Participants are exogenously and randomly assigned to one of two groups. Subsequently they play a sequence of eight games with either an in-group or an outgroup member. In treatment EXO in-and out-group matches are formed exogenously, while in ENDO participants can choose between in-and out-group matches. We find strong evidence of in-group bias in EXO, and strong evidence of homophily in ENDO. In-group biases, however, either decrease or disappear altogether under endogenous matching. We show that self-selection of homophilous agents into in-group matches cannot explain this fact. We also find that homophily is strongly correlated with risk aversion, and we build on this evidence to derive a rationale for both the existence of homophily and the disappearance of in-group biases under endogenous matching.

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Section: Selectioncontrasting

confidence: 39%

Identity, homophily and in-group bias

Currarini

Mengel

2016

European Economic Review

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“…Furthermore, previous evidence shows that responder behavior in the ultimatum game is sensitive to subtle experimental manipulations. For example, imposing a 10 min cooling-off period before subjects can respond or allowing them to attach messages to their decisions has been shown to dramatically increase acceptance rates of low offers (Xiao and Houser, 2005;Grimm and Mengel, 2011). Even if our within-subjects design may have elicited less intra-subject variation in behavior than desirable, our evidence shows that a subject's change in his aggressive mood from one week to the next correlated with changes in his behavior in the ultimatum game.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 69%

Testosterone administration does not affect men's rejections of low ultimatum game offers or aggressive mood

Cueva

Roberts

Spencer

et al. 2017

Hormones and Behavior

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Correlative evidence suggests that testosterone promotes dominance and aggression. However, causal evidence is scarce and offers mixed results. To investigate this relationship, we administered testosterone for 48h to 41 healthy young adult men in a within-subjects, double-blind placebo-controlled balanced crossover design. Subjects played the role of responders in an ultimatum game, where rejecting a low offer is costly, but serves to destroy the proposer's profit. Such action can hence be interpreted as non-physical aggression in response to social provocation. In addition, subjects completed a self-assessed mood questionnaire. As expected, self-reported aggressiveness was a key predictor of ultimatum game rejections. However, while testosterone affected subjective ratings of feeling energetic and interested, our evidence strongly suggests that testosterone had no effect on ultimatum game rejections or on aggressive mood. Our findings illustrate the importance of using causal interventions to assess correlative evidence.

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“…Previous work has shown that when players are put under time pressure to make decisions in one-shot games, they are more likely behave cooperatively (Rand et al, 2014;Rand, Greene, & Nowak, 2012). Similarly, other studies also using one-shot games have shown that when players are given a cooling off period they are less likely to punish cheating partners (Grimm & Mengel, 2011;Smith & Silberberg, 2010;Sutter, Kocher, & Strauß, 2003). These studies suggest that when players are the given time to consider their decisions they are more likely to respond in a way that maximizes their payoff in their current one-shot setting rather than rely on intuitions that may maximize payoffs over repeated encounters in the real world but not one-shot laboratory settings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Human punishment is motivated by both a desire for revenge and a desire for equality

Bone

Raihani

2015

Evolution and Human Behavior

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Humans willingly pay a cost to punish defecting partners in experimental games. However, the psychological motives underpinning punishment are unclear. Punishment could stem from the desire to reciprocally harm a cheat (i.e. revenge) which is arguably indicative of a deterrent function. Alternatively, punishment could be motivated by the desire to redress the balance between punisher and cheat. Such a desire for equality might be more indicative of a fitness-leveling function. We used a two player experimental game to disentangle these two possibilities. In this game, one player could choose to steal $0.20 from their partner. Depending on the treatment, players interacting with a stealing partner experienced either advantageous inequality, equal outcomes or disadvantageous inequality. Players could punish stealing partners but some players had access to effective punishment (1 : 3 fee to fine) whereas others could only use ineffective punishment (1 : 1). Players who had access to effective punishment could reduce disadvantageous inequality by tailoring their investment in punishment whereas ineffective punishment did not change the relative payoffs of the individuals in the game but could be used to exact revenge. Players punished regardless of whether stealing created outcome inequality or whether punishment was ineffective at removing payoff differentials, suggesting that punishment was at least partly motivated by the desire to inflict reciprocal harm. However, in the effective punishment condition, players' tendency to punish increased if stealing resulted in disadvantageous inequality and, when possible, punishers tailored their investment in punishment to create equal outcomes. Together these findings suggest that punishment is motivated by both a desire for revenge and a desire for equality. The implications of these findings are discussed.

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Let me sleep on it: Delay reduces rejection rates in ultimatum games

Cited by 120 publications

References 10 publications

Identity, homophily and in-group bias

Identity, homophily and in-group bias

Testosterone administration does not affect men's rejections of low ultimatum game offers or aggressive mood

Human punishment is motivated by both a desire for revenge and a desire for equality

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