The many Faces of Human Sociality: Uncovering the Distribution and Stability of Social Preferences

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. There is vast heterogeneity in the human willingness to weigh others' interests in decision making. This heterogeneity raises the question how one can parsimoniously model and characterize heterogeneity across several dimensions of social preferences while still being able to predict behavior over time and across situations. We tackle this task with an experiment and a structural model of preferences that allows us to simultaneously estimate outcome-based and reciprocity-based social preferences. We find that non-selfish preferences are the rule rather than the exception. Neither at the level of the representative agent nor when we allow for several preference types do purely selfish types emerge. Instead, three qualitatively different otherregarding types emerge endogenously, i.e., without pre-specifying assumptions about the characteristics of types. When ahead, all three types value others' payoffs significantly more than when behind. The first type, denoted strongly altruistic type, is characterized by a relatively large weight on others' payoffs and moderate levels of reciprocity. The second type is, moderately altruistic and also puts positive weight on others' payoff, yet at a considerable lower level, and displays no positive reciprocity while the third type is behindness averse, i.e., puts a large negative weight on others' payoffs when behind and behaves selfishly otherwise. We also find that there is an unambiguous and temporally stable assignment of individuals to these types. Moreover, the three-type model substantially improves the predictions of individuals' behavior across additional games while the information contained in subject-specific parameter estimates leads to no or only minor additional predictive power. This suggests that a parsimonious model with three types captures the bulk of the predictive power contained in the preference estimates. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-codes: C490, C910, D030.

Revealed preferences in a sequential prisoners’ dilemma: A horse-race between six utility functions

“…This robustness in the rankings from the different races suggests that the Selten-Krischker approach does not compromise on the capacity to identify relevant patterns in the data, as compared with more traditional methods. Our results complement the literature on structural estimation of social preferences, see Bruhin et al (2018) and the references therein.…”

“…These hit rates suggest that Reciprocity Conditional welfare, and Homo moralis are the most capable of explaining our data. 17 These hit rates should of course be taken with a grain of salt. We will here briefly discuss two concerns: each model's number of free parameters, and "hit area", respectively.…”

“…The ex ante utility function of a Homo moralis with degree of morality  ∈ [0 1] is given in equation (17). It follows that, conditional upon being the first mover, the expected utility difference between playing  ( 1 = 1) and  ( 1 = 0) is…”

Choosing Who You Are: The Structure and Behavioral Effects of Revealed Identification Preferences

“…This analysis is also related to the broader literature on the existence, heterogeneity and stability of social preferences (Andreoni and Miller 2002, Charness and Rabin 2002, Engelmann and Strobel 2004, Fisman et al 2007, Bellemare et al 2008, Iriberri and Rey-Biel 2011, 2013, Breitmoser 2013, Bruhin et al 2016. In this regard our paper advocates the consideration of identification behavior as a potential mechanism underlying the existence and heterogeneity of social preferences across settings, individuals, and time.…”

The Golden Age of Social Science

“…Cognitive neuroscientists have also used these games to measure social preferences, identify circuitry implementing prosociality (Tricomi, Rangel, Camerer, & O'Doherty, 2010), associate brain lesions with abnormal social preference (Krajbich, Adolphs, Tranel, Denburg, & Camerer, 2009), and linking to individual differences in neurotypical populations more generally (Bruhin, Fehr, & Schunk, 2019).…”