IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gra/wpaper/05-14.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do experimental subjects favor their friends?

Author

Listed:
  • Pablo Brañas-Garza

    (Department of Economic Theory and Economic History, University of Granada)

  • Miguel Angel Durán

    (Department of Economic Theory and Economic History, University of Granada)

  • María Paz Espinosa

    (Universidad del País Vasco)

Abstract

Ideally we would like subjects of experiments to be perfect strangers so that the situation they face at the lab is not just a part of a long run interaction. Unfortunately, it is not easy to reach those conditions and experimenters try to mitigate any effects coming form these out-of- the-lab relationships by, for instance, randomly matching subjects. However, even if this type of procedure is used, there is a positive probability that a subject faces a friend or an acquaintance. We find evidence that social proximity among subjects is irrelevant for experiments’ results in dictator games. Thus, although ideal conditions are not met, relations among subjects are not contaminating the experiments’ results.

Suggested Citation

  • Pablo Brañas-Garza & Miguel Angel Durán & María Paz Espinosa, 2005. "Do experimental subjects favor their friends?," ThE Papers 05/14, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    • Handle: RePEc:gra:wpaper:05/14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ugr.es/~teoriahe/RePEc/gra/wpaper/thepapers05_14.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frank, Bjorn, 1998. "Good news for experimenters: subjects do not care about your welfare," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 171-174, November.
    2. Hoffman, Elizabeth & McCabe, Kevin & Smith, Vernon L, 1996. "Social Distance and Other-Regarding Behavior in Dictator Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 653-660, June.
    3. Branas-Garza, Pablo, 2006. "Poverty in dictator games: Awakening solidarity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 306-320, July.
    4. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Cobo-Reyes, Ramón & Espinosa, María Paz & Jiménez, Natalia & Kovárík, Jaromír & Ponti, Giovanni, 2010. "Altruism and social integration," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 249-257, July.
      • Brañas Garza, Pablo & Cobo Reyes, Ramón & Espinosa Alejos, María Paz & Jiménez, Natalia & Kovarik, Jaromir & Ponti, Giovanni, 2009. "Altruism and Social Integration," IKERLANAK 6414, Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico I.
      • Brañas Garza, Pablo & Cobo Reyes, Ramón & Espinosa Alejos, María Paz & Jiménez, Natalia & Kovarik, Jaromir & Ponti, Giovanni, 2009. "Altruism and Social Integration," DFAEII Working Papers 6414, University of the Basque Country - Department of Foundations of Economic Analysis II.
    5. Gary E. Bolton & Rami Zwick & Elena Katok, 1998. "Dictator game giving: Rules of fairness versus acts of kindness," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 27(2), pages 269-299.
    6. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Cobo-Reyes, Ramón & Espinosa, María Paz & Jiménez, Natalia & Kovárík, Jaromír & Ponti, Giovanni, 2010. "Altruism and social integration," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 249-257, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Branas-Garza, Pablo, 2007. "Promoting helping behavior with framing in dictator games," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 477-486, August.
    2. Anastasios Koukoumelis & Maria Vittoria Levati & Chiara Nardi, 2021. "Social and Moral Distance in Risky Settings," Working Papers 13/2021, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    3. Pablo Branas-Garza & Ramon Cobo-Reyes & Natalia Jimenez & Giovanni Pontiy, 2013. "A Guided Tour to (Real-Life) Social Network Elicitation," Working Papers 13-21, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    4. Midler, Estelle & Pascual, Unai & Drucker, Adam G. & Narloch, Ulf & Soto, José Luis, 2015. "Unraveling the effects of payments for ecosystem services on motivations for collective action," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 394-405.
    5. Schüller, David & Tauchmann, Harald & Upmann, Thorsten & Weimar, Daniel, 2014. "Pro-social behavior in the TV show “Come Dine With Me”: An empirical investigation," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 44-55.
    6. Shupp, Robert & Sheremeta, Roman M. & Schmidt, David & Walker, James, 2013. "Resource allocation contests: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 257-267.
    7. Jacob K. Goeree & Margaret A. McConnell & Tiffany Mitchell & Tracey Tromp & Leeat Yariv, 2010. "The 1/d Law of Giving," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 183-203, February.
    8. Pei-Pei Liu & Vasiliy Safin & Barry Yang & Christian C Luhmann, 2015. "Direct and Indirect Influence of Altruistic Behavior in a Social Network," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(10), pages 1-18, October.
    9. Ramón Cobo-Reyes & Natalia Jiménez, 2012. "The dark side of friendship: ‘envy’," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(4), pages 547-570, December.
    10. Pablo Branas-Garza & Natalia Jimenez & Giovanni Ponti, 2017. "Eliciting real-life social networks: a guided tour," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 1(1), pages 33-39, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Bucheli, Marisa & Espinosa, María Paz, 2020. "Altruism and information," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    2. Takanori Ida & Kazuhito Ogawa, 2012. "Inequality aversion, social discount, and time discount rates," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 39(5), pages 314-329, April.
    3. Branas-Garza Pablo & María Paz Espinosa, 2006. "Altruism with Social Roots: An Emerging Literature," Revista Desarrollo y Sociedad, Universidad de los Andes,Facultad de Economía, CEDE, September.
    4. repec:clg:wpaper:2014-43 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. David Johnson & Sebastian Goerg & Jonathan Rogers, "undated". "Can't Touch This! Similarity And Willingness to Keep "Dirty Money"," Working Papers 2014-81, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 10 Nov 2014.
    6. Pablo Brañas-Garza & Antonio Morales, 2005. "Moral Framing in Dictator Games by Short Sentences," ThE Papers 05/06, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    7. Aguiar, Fernando & Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Miller, Luis M., 2008. "Moral distance in dictator games," Judgment and Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(4), pages 344-354, April.
    8. Binzel, Christine & Fehr, Dietmar, 2013. "Social distance and trust: Experimental evidence from a slum in Cairo," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 99-106.
    9. Ramón Cobo-Reyes & Natalia Jiménez, 2012. "The dark side of friendship: ‘envy’," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(4), pages 547-570, December.
    10. Chen, Jingnan & Houser, Daniel & Montinari, Natalia & Piovesan, Marco, 2016. "Beware of popular kids bearing gifts: A framed field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 132(PA), pages 104-120.
    11. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Cobo-Reyes, Ramón & Espinosa, María Paz & Jiménez, Natalia & Kovárík, Jaromír & Ponti, Giovanni, 2010. "Altruism and social integration," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 249-257, July.
    12. Pablo Brañas-Garza, 2008. "Expected Behavior in the Dictator Game," ThE Papers 08/12, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    13. Heinrich, Timo & Brosig-Koch, Jeannette, 2015. "Promises and Social Distance in Buyer-Determined Procurement Auctions," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112892, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Ben D'Exelle & Arno Riedl, 2010. "Directed Generosity and Network Formation: Network Dimension Matters," CESifo Working Paper Series 3287, CESifo.
    15. Branas-Garza, Pablo, 2007. "Promoting helping behavior with framing in dictator games," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 477-486, August.
    16. Simon Gächter & Chris Starmer & Fabio Tufano, 2015. "Measuring the Closeness of Relationships: A Comprehensive Evaluation of the 'Inclusion of the Other in the Self' Scale," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-19, June.
    17. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Cobo-Reyes, Ramón & Espinosa, María Paz & Jiménez, Natalia & Kovárík, Jaromír & Ponti, Giovanni, 2010. "Altruism and social integration," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 249-257, July.
      • Brañas Garza, Pablo & Cobo Reyes, Ramón & Espinosa Alejos, María Paz & Jiménez, Natalia & Kovarik, Jaromir & Ponti, Giovanni, 2009. "Altruism and Social Integration," IKERLANAK 6414, Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico I.
      • Brañas Garza, Pablo & Cobo Reyes, Ramón & Espinosa Alejos, María Paz & Jiménez, Natalia & Kovarik, Jaromir & Ponti, Giovanni, 2009. "Altruism and Social Integration," DFAEII Working Papers 6414, University of the Basque Country - Department of Foundations of Economic Analysis II.
    18. Alexander Morell, 2014. "The Short Arm of Guilt: Guilt Aversion Plays Out More Across a Short Social Distance," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2014_19, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, revised Dec 2016.
    19. DeScioli, Peter & Krishna, Siddhi, 2013. "Giving to whom? Altruism in different types of relationships," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 218-228.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    experimental procedures; friendship effect; dictator game; fairness.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C99 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Other
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gra:wpaper:05/14. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Angel Solano Garcia. (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dtugres.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.