Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Measuring the Distribution of Spitefulness

Contents:

Author Info

  • Kimbrough Erik O.
  • Reiss J. Philipp

    (METEOR)

Abstract

Spiteful, antisocial behavior undermines the moral and institutional fabric of society, producingdisorder, fear and mistrust. Previous research demonstrates the willingness of individuals to harmothers, but little is understood about how far people are willing to go in being spiteful or theirconsistency in spitefulness across repeated trials. Our experiment is the first to provideindividuals with repeated opportunities to spitefully harm anonymous others when the decisionentails zero cost to the spiter and cannot be observed by the object of spite. This method revealsthat the majority of individuals exhibit consistent (non-)spitefulness over time and that thedistribution of spitefulness is bipolar: when choosing whether to be spiteful, most individualseither avoid spite altogether or impose the maximum possible harm on their unwitting victims.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://edocs.ub.unimaas.nl/loader/file.asp?id=1704
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Maastricht : METEOR, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization in its series Research Memoranda with number 040.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:dgr:umamet:2012040

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/UMPublications.htm

Related research

Keywords: microeconomics ;

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. David J. Cooper & Hanming Fang, 2006. "Understanding Overbidding in Second Price Auctions: An Experimental Study," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1557, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
  2. Roth, Alvin & Ockenfels, Axel & Ariely, Dan, 2005. "An Experimental Analysis of Ending Rules in Internet Auctions," Scholarly Articles 2579649, Harvard University Department of Economics.
  3. Fehr, Ernst & Hoff, Karla & Kshetramade, Mayuresh, 2008. "Spite and development," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4619, The World Bank.
  4. Timothy Cason & Tatsuyoshi Saijo & Takehiko Yamato, 2002. "Voluntary Participation and Spite in Public Good Provision Experiments: An International Comparison," Experimental Economics, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 133-153, October.
  5. Houser, Daniel & Xiao, Erte, 2010. "Inequality-seeking punishment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 20-23, October.
  6. Klaus Abbink & Abdolkarim Sadrieh, 2008. "The Pleasure of Being Nasty," FEMM Working Papers 08037, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
  7. John Morgan & Ken Steiglitz & George Reis, 2003. "The Spite Motive and Equilibrium Behavior in Auctions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, Berkeley Electronic Press, vol. 0(1), pages 5.
  8. Naoko Nishimura & Timothy N. Cason & Tatsuyoshi Saijo & Yoshikazu Ikeda, 2011. "Spite and Reciprocity in Auctions," Games, MDPI, Open Access Journal, vol. 2(3), pages 365-411, September.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dgr:umamet:2012040

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Charles Bollen).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.