IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/expeco/v17y2014i3p414-420.html

The effects of the take-option in dictator-game experiments: a comment on Engel’s (2011) meta-study

Author

Listed:
  • Le Zhang

  • Andreas Ortmann

Abstract

In this paper, we report a replication of Engel’s (Exp. Econ. 14(4):583–610, 2011 ) meta-study of dictator game experiments. We find Engel’s meta-study of dictator game experiments to be robust, with one important exception: the coding of the take-option (List in J. Polit. Econ. 115(3):482–493, 2007 ; Bardsley in Exp. Econ. 11(2):122–133, 2008 ; Cappelen et al. in Econ. Lett. 118(2):280–283, 2013 ). While Engel reports this as having no statistically significant effect, in our replications, we find an economically and statistically significant negative effect on giving in line with the relevant literature. Copyright Economic Science Association 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Le Zhang & Andreas Ortmann, 2014. "The effects of the take-option in dictator-game experiments: a comment on Engel’s (2011) meta-study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(3), pages 414-420, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:expeco:v:17:y:2014:i:3:p:414-420
    DOI: 10.1007/s10683-013-9375-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10683-013-9375-7
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10683-013-9375-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timo Heinrich & Thomas Riechmann & Joachim Weimann, 2009. "Game or frame? Incentives in modified Dictator Games," FEMM Working Papers 09008, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    2. Christoph Engel, 2011. "Dictator games: a meta study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(4), pages 583-610, November.
    3. Jeanette Brosig & Thomas Riechmann & Joachim Weimann, 2007. "Selfish in the end? An investigation of consistency and stability of individual behaviour," FEMM Working Papers 07005, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    4. John A. List, 2007. "On the Interpretation of Giving in Dictator Games," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(3), pages 482-493.
    5. Dewald, William G & Thursby, Jerry G & Anderson, Richard G, 1986. "Replication in Empirical Economics: The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking Project," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 587-603, September.
    6. Todd L. Cherry & Peter Frykblom & Jason F. Shogren, 2002. "Hardnose the Dictator," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1218-1221, September.
    7. Cappelen, Alexander W. & Nielsen, Ulrik H. & Sørensen, Erik Ø. & Tungodden, Bertil & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2013. "Give and take in dictator games," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 280-283.
    8. Guala, Francesco & Mittone, Luigi, 2010. "Paradigmatic experiments: The Dictator Game," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 578-584, October.
    9. Rene Bekkers, 2007. "Measuring altruistic behavior in surveys: The all-or-nothing dictator game," Artefactual Field Experiments 00102, The Field Experiments Website.
    10. Anna Dreber & Tore Ellingsen & Magnus Johannesson & David Rand, 2013. "Do people care about social context? Framing effects in dictator games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(3), pages 349-371, September.
    11. Nicholas Bardsley, 2008. "Dictator game giving: altruism or artefact?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 11(2), pages 122-133, June.
    12. Le Zhang & Andreas Ortmann, 2012. "On the Interpretation of Giving, Taking, and Destruction in Dictator Games and Joy-of-Destruction Games," Discussion Papers 2012-50, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    13. Reiner Eichenberger & Felix Oberholzer-Gee, 1998. "Rational moralists: The role of fairness in democratic economic politics," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(1), pages 191-210, January.
    14. 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.
    15. Le Zhang & Andreas Ortmann, 2012. "A reproduction and replication of Engel’s meta-study of dictator game experiments," Discussion Papers 2012-44, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    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. Isabel Thielmann & Daniel W. Heck & Benjamin E. Hilbig, 2016. "Anonymity and incentives: An investigation of techniques to reduce socially desirable responding in the Trust Game," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 11(5), pages 527-536, September.
    2. Marius Alt & Carlo Gallier & Achim Schlüter & Katherine Nelson & Eva Anggraini, 2018. "Giving to versus Taking from In- and Out-Group Members," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-14, August.
    3. Bigoni, Maria & Ploner, Matteo & Vu, Thi-Thanh-Tam, 2023. "The right person for the right job: workers’ prosociality as a screening device," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 53-73.
    4. Zhang, Le & Ortmann, Andreas, 2016. "Pro-social or anti-social, or both? A within- and between-subjects study of social preferences," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 23-32.

    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. Emin Karagözoğlu & Elif Tosun, 2022. "Endogenous Game Choice and Giving Behavior in Distribution Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-32, November.
    2. Kassas, Bachir & Palma, Marco A., 2019. "Self-serving biases in social norm compliance," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 388-408.
    3. Le Zhang & Andreas Ortmann, 2012. "A reproduction and replication of Engel’s meta-study of dictator game experiments," Discussion Papers 2012-44, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    4. Thunström, Linda, 2019. "Preferences for fairness over losses," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    5. Faillo, Marco & Rizzolli, Matteo & Tontrup, Stephan, 2019. "Thou shalt not steal: Taking aversion with legal property claims," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 88-101.
    6. Alexandre Flage, 2024. "Taking games: a meta-analysis," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 255-278, December.
    7. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Joo Young Jeon & Bibhas Saha, 2017. "Gender Differences in the Giving and Taking Variants of the Dictator Game," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(2), pages 474-483, October.
    8. Kettner, Sara Elisa & Waichman, Israel, 2016. "Old age and prosocial behavior: Social preferences or experimental confounds?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 118-130.
    9. Bonan, Jacopo & Burlacu, Sergiu & Galliera, Arianna, 2023. "Prosociality in variants of the dictator game: Evidence from children in El Salvador," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    10. Breitmoser, Yves & Vorjohann, Pauline, 2018. "Welfare-Based Altruism," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 89, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    11. Korenok, Oleg & Millner, Edward L. & Razzolini, Laura, 2018. "Taking aversion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 397-403.
      • Korenok Oleg & Edward L. Millner & Laura Razzolini, 2017. "Taking Aversion," Working Papers 1702, VCU School of Business, Department of Economics.
    12. Breitmoser, Yves & Vorjohann, Pauline, 2022. "Fairness-based Altruism," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 666, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    13. Valerio Capraro & Andrea Vanzo, 2019. "The power of moral words: Loaded language generates framing effects in the extreme dictator game," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 14(3), pages 309-317, May.
    14. Alevy, Jonathan E. & Jeffries, Francis L. & Lu, Yonggang, 2014. "Gender- and frame-specific audience effects in dictator games," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 50-54.
    15. Chang, Daphne & Chen, Roy & Krupka, Erin, 2019. "Rhetoric matters: A social norms explanation for the anomaly of framing," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 158-178.
    16. James C. Cox & Vjollca Sadiraj, 2018. "Incentives," Experimental Economics Center Working Paper Series 2018-01, Experimental Economics Center, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    17. Marco Faillo & Matteo Rizzolli & Stephan Tontrup, 2016. "Thou shalt not steal (from hard-working people)An experiment on respect for property claims," Econometica Working Papers wp58, Econometica.
    18. Peter G. Moffatt & Graciela Zevallos, 2021. "A Kuhn–Tucker model for behaviour in dictator games," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 7(2), pages 226-243, December.
    19. Leibbrandt, Andreas & Maitra, Pushkar & Neelim, Ananta, 2015. "On the redistribution of wealth in a developing country: Experimental evidence on stake and framing effects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 360-371.
    20. Zhang, Le & Ortmann, Andreas, 2016. "Pro-social or anti-social, or both? A within- and between-subjects study of social preferences," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 23-32.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C24 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Truncated and Censored Models; Switching Regression Models; Threshold Regression Models
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. The effects of the take-option in dictator-game experiments: a comment on Engel’s (2011) meta-study (Experimental Economics 2014) in ReplicationWiki

    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:kap:expeco:v:17:y:2014:i:3:p:414-420. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.