IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nan/wpaper/1708.html

Clash of the Temperaments: Why Vendettas Perpetuate

Author

Listed:
  • Friedel BOLLE

    (European University Viadrina, Germany.)

  • Jonathan H.W. TAN

    (University of Nottingham, UK.)

Abstract

The Vendetta Game dynamically models conflict resolution processes in which players can take turns to steal from one another probabilities of winning a prize. Vendettas are far more prevalent in the laboratory than predicted in equilibrium, assuming self-interest or even spite. To make sense of this, we identify four behavioral types each with their temperaments: melancholic Gamesmen (27%) who play equilibrium, antisocially sanguine Sharks (53%) who optimistically demand more than their equilibrium share, choleric Educators (17%) who punish greedy co-players or otherwise play equilibrium, and phlegmatic Meeks (3%) who demand less than their equilibrium share. Within games, i.e. through the course of stealing and counter-stealing, non-Sharks become greedier. Across games, the characteristic profiles of subject types sharpen with experience. Sharks earn least and Meeks earn most. The clash of temperaments perpetuates feuds. We compare our four types with the types of players observed in the related Repeated Prisoner s Dilemma game.

Suggested Citation

  • Friedel BOLLE & Jonathan H.W. TAN, 2017. "Clash of the Temperaments: Why Vendettas Perpetuate," Economic Growth Centre Working Paper Series 1708, Nanyang Technological University, School of Social Sciences, Economic Growth Centre.
    • Handle: RePEc:nan:wpaper:1708
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://web.hss.ntu.edu.sg/egc/wp/2017/2017-08.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nejat Anbarci & Nick Feltovich, 2013. "How sensitive are bargaining outcomes to changes in disagreement payoffs?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(4), pages 560-596, December.
    2. Dickinson, David L. & Masclet, David, 2015. "Emotion venting and punishment in public good experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 55-67.
    3. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1982. "Perfect Equilibrium in a Bargaining Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 97-109, January.
    4. Mateus Joffily & David Masclet & Charles N Noussair & Marie Claire Villeval, 2014. "Emotions, Sanctions, and Cooperation," Southern Economic Journal, Southern Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 1002-1027, April.
    5. Linda Babcock & George Loewenstein, 1997. "Explaining Bargaining Impasse: The Role of Self-Serving Biases," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 109-126, Winter.
    6. Friedel Bolle & Yves Breitmoser & Jana Heimel & Claudia Vogel, 2012. "Multiple motives of pro-social behavior: evidence from the solidarity game," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 72(3), pages 303-321, March.
    7. Gary Charness & Matthew Rabin, 2002. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 817-869.
    8. Fischbacher, Urs & Gachter, Simon & Fehr, Ernst, 2001. "Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 397-404, June.
    9. Subhasish Chowdhury & Oliver Gürtler, 2015. "Sabotage in contests: a survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 135-155, July.
    10. Astrid Hopfensitz & Ernesto Reuben, 2009. "The Importance of Emotions for the Effectiveness of Social Punishment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(540), pages 1534-1559, October.
    11. George Loewenstein, 2000. "Emotions in Economic Theory and Economic Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 426-432, May.
    12. M Perugini & J H W Tan & D J Zizzo, 2010. "Which is the More Predictable Gender? Public Good Contribution and Personality," Economic Issues Journal Articles, Economic Issues, vol. 15(1), pages 83-110, March.
    13. Jon Elster, 1998. "Emotions and Economic Theory," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 47-74, March.
    14. Nikiforakis, Nikos & Noussair, Charles N. & Wilkening, Tom, 2012. "Normative conflict and feuds: The limits of self-enforcement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 797-807.
    15. Blanco, Mariana & Engelmann, Dirk & Normann, Hans Theo, 2011. "A within-subject analysis of other-regarding preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 321-338, June.
    16. Swope, Kurtis J. & Cadigan, John & Schmitt, Pamela M. & Shupp, Robert, 2008. "Personality preferences in laboratory economics experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 998-1009, June.
    17. Christine Harbring & Bernd Irlenbusch & Matthias Krakel & Reinhard Selten, 2007. "Sabotage in Corporate Contests - An Experimental Analysis," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 367-392.
    18. Mateus Joffily & David Masclet & Charles N Noussair & Marie Claire Villeval, 2014. "Emotions, Sanctions, and Cooperation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 80(4), pages 1002-1027, April.
    19. Babcock, Linda, et al, 1995. "Biased Judgments of Fairness in Bargaining," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1337-1343, December.
    20. Binmore, Ken & Morgan, Peter & Snaked, Avner & Sutton, John, 1991. "Do people exploit their bargaining power? An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 295-322, August.
    21. Tan, Jonathan H.W. & Breitmoser, Yves & Bolle, Friedel, 2015. "Voluntary contributions by consent or dissent," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 106-121.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Friedel Bolle & Jonathan H. W. Tan, 2021. "Behavioral types of the dark side: identifying heterogeneous conflict strategies," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 7(1), pages 49-63, September.
    2. Noussair, Charles N. & Tucker, Steven & Xu, Yilong & Breaban, Adriana, 2024. "The role of emotions in public goods games with and without punishment opportunities," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 631-646.
    3. Simon Bartke & Steven J. Bosworth & Dennis J. Snower & Gabriele Chierchia, 2019. "Motives and comprehension in a public goods game with induced emotions," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 86(2), pages 205-238, March.
    4. Reuben, Ernesto & Riedl, Arno, 2013. "Enforcement of contribution norms in public good games with heterogeneous populations," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 122-137.
    5. Friedel Bolle & Philipp E. Otto, 2016. "Role-dependent Social Preferences," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(332), pages 704-740, October.
    6. Claude Fluet & Rpbertp Galbiati, 2016. "Lois et normes : les enseignements de l'économie comportementale," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 92(1-2), pages 191-215.
    7. Niklas Dreyer & Robert M. Gillenkirch, 2019. "Cash versus opportunity costs and revenues in bilateral bargaining," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 89(4), pages 357-383, June.
    8. Ubeda, Paloma, 2014. "The consistency of fairness rules: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 88-100.
    9. Agnes Tomini, 2025. "Self-protection and self-insurance in an age of anxiety," AMSE Working Papers 2514, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    10. Jinkwon Lee & Sujin Min, 2021. "The effects of repeated induction of emotions on cooperation and punishment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(3), pages 925-943, July.
    11. Martin G. Kocher & Peter Martinsson & Kristian Ove R. Myrseth & Conny E. Wollbrant, 2017. "Strong, bold, and kind: self-control and cooperation in social dilemmas," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(1), pages 44-69, March.
    12. Jacobs Martin, 2016. "Accounting for Changing Tastes: Approaches to Explaining Unstable Individual Preferences," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 67(2), pages 121-183, August.
    13. Colin F. Camerer & Gideon Nave & Alec Smith, 2019. "Dynamic Unstructured Bargaining with Private Information: Theory, Experiment, and Outcome Prediction via Machine Learning," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(4), pages 1867-1890, April.
    14. Bicskei, Marianna & Lankau, Matthias & Bizer, Kilian, 2016. "Negative reciprocity and its relation to anger-like emotions in identity-homogeneous and -heterogeneous groups," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 17-34.
    15. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    16. Dickinson, David L. & Masclet, David, 2015. "Emotion venting and punishment in public good experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 55-67.
    17. Lambert, Eve-Angéline & Peterle, Emmanuel & Tisserand, Jean-Christian, 2019. "Pretrial settlement and coercion: An experiment," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    18. Greiff, Matthias & Giamattei, Marcus, 2024. "Spillovers from incentive schemes on distributional preferences and expectations," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    19. Drouvelis, Michalis & Grosskopf, Brit, 2016. "The effects of induced emotions on pro-social behaviour," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 1-8.
    20. Simon G�chter & Arno Riedl, "undated". "Moral Property Rights in Bargaining," IEW - Working Papers 113, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions

    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:nan:wpaper:1708. 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: Magdalene Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dentusg.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.