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Do negative emotions explain punishment in power-to-take game experiments?

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  • Galeotti, Fabio

Abstract

An important branch of economic research on emotions has used power-to-take game experiments to study the impact of negative emotions, such as anger, irritation and contempt, on the decision to punish. We investigate experimentally the role that the specific punishment technology adopted plays in this context, and test to what extent punishing behavior can be truly attributed to negative emotions. We find that a large part (around 70%) of the punishment behavior observed in previous PTTG studies is explained by the technology of punishment adopted instead of negative emotions. Once this effect is removed, negative emotions do still play an important role, but the efficiency costs associated to them are much smaller.

Suggested Citation

  • Galeotti, Fabio, 2015. "Do negative emotions explain punishment in power-to-take game experiments?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 1-14.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:49:y:2015:i:c:p:1-14
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2015.03.005
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Emotions; Punishment; Power-to-take; Experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A12 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

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