Skip to main content
Log in

Do people care about social context? Framing effects in dictator games

  • Published:
Experimental Economics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Many previous experiments document that behavior in multi-person settings responds to the name of the game and the labeling of strategies. With a few exceptions, these studies cannot tell whether frames affect preferences or beliefs. In three large experiments, we investigate whether social framing effects are also present in Dictator games. Since only one of the subjects makes a decision, the frame can affect behavior merely through preferences. In all the experiments, we find that behavior is insensitive to social framing. We discuss how to reconcile the absence of social framing effects in Dictator games with the presence of social framing effects in Ultimatum games.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. See also Andreoni (1995), Brewer and Kramer (1986), Cookson (2000), Ellingsen et al. (2012), McDaniel and Sistrunk (1991), McCusker and Carnevale (1995), Pillutla and Chen (1999), Sell and Son (1997), Sonnemans et al. (1998), van Dijk and Wilke (2000), and Zhong et al. (2007). There are also some studies that fail to find the expected social framing effects, notably Brandts and Schwieren (2009), Cubitt et al. (2011), Dufwenberg et al. (2011), and Rege and Telle (2004). However, in Rege and Telle (2004) the effect size is large, so the lack of statistical significance might be due to a small sample, and Dufwenberg et al. (2011) have inadvertently, but instructively, used ambiguous social frames. Most of the above works consider relatively “light” social framing, i.e., manipulations of labels only. The earliest studies, by Deutsch (1958, 1960), apply “heavy” social framing, with more pronounced demands on behavior.

  2. If people care only about the own material payoff, beliefs should play no role in a Prisoners’ dilemma. However, various common forms of altruism and reciprocity suffice to map a material Prisoners’ dilemma into a game with multiple equilibria; see Ellingsen et al. (2012) for formalities.

  3. Relatedly, Cubitt et al. (2011) study the impact of framing on punishment and emotions in a one-shot social dilemma with and without punishment. They find no evidence that the frame affects punishment behavior or emotions, leading them to conclude that social preferences are relatively stable. However, the framing effect on initial contributions is also insignificant in their study.

  4. In the concluding section, we discuss the closely related unpublished study by Suvoy (2003), which was recently brought to our attention by Sujoy Chakravarty. There we also discuss the findings of Leliveld et al. (2008) concerning framing effects in Ultimatum games. For completeness, let us here also mention one additional related study. Keysar et al. (2008) ostensibly let pairs of subjects play a sequence of two Dictator games, with some pairs acting under a “give” frame and other pairs under a “take” frame. Leaving aside the problem that an even allocation of the money can be attained after any decision by the first mover, the experiment must be interpreted with caution for several reasons. First, only one participant is being paid. Thus, at most one of the subjects in a pair will be playing with real money. When the first mover chooses an even split rather than to keep all the money, this could thus be seen as an implicit suggestion of mutual insurance. Due to risk aversion, both players getting 50 is preferable to both players having an even chance of 100 and 0. Second, the experiment involves severe deception: In fact, there is no first mover. All subjects are second movers, being led to believe that the first mover chose an even split. Apparently many of the participants anticipated being deceived, as data for ten of the fifty participants in the relevant experiment were excluded because these participants didn’t believe that there was a second mover.

  5. Besides the evidence that social frames matter in multi-person games, there is evidence that other sorts of frames can matter in single-person decision problems. For example, in a seminal study, Tversky and Kahneman (1981) showed that people’s ranking of lotteries depend on whether outcomes are framed as gains or losses. For a survey of individual choice effects of wording, see Levin et al. (1998). For a suggestion how to take account of framing effects in decision theory, see Salant and Rubinstein (2008).

  6. At the time of writing, the literature on Dictator games comprises more than 120 published articles; see Engel (2011) for a recent survey.

  7. Recall that Becker and Stigler (1977), while defending preference stability, never insisted that people ought to be seen as selfish materialists. To the contrary, throughout his career, Gary Becker has been a leading advocate of social preferences. His models are populated with agents having tastes for (out-group) discrimination as well as (in-group) altruism. See, e.g., Becker (1974).

  8. It is quite clear that people are more prone to share windfalls than earned money (e.g., Cherry et al. 2002), and it is likely that this is due to social norms that distinguish the two situations (Cappelen et al. 2007).

  9. Kritikos and Bolle (2005) introduce asymmetric information about the dictator’s endowment and show that some dictators with a large endowment choose to give half of the smaller endowment. Related effects were previously documented in the Ultimatum game literature, where experiments vary responders’ knowledge of proposers’ endowment; see, e.g., Mitzkewitz and Nagel (1993). However, here it is difficult to disentangle effects stemming from social esteem concerns from effects stemming from strategic responder behavior.

  10. Another possibility is that the ideal point changes for some subjects, who think that the norm prescribes an equal split of whatever surplus they have the power to distribute.

  11. There are also several studies suggesting that subtle primes, such as pictures of eyes or a few dots arranged like a face on the computer screen, affect behavior in Dictator games (Haley and Fessler 2005; Rigdon et al. 2009). One interpretation is that these cues subconsciously enhance concerns for social esteem or decrease the felt social distance.

  12. The flier contained the following text: “Participate in a behavioral study in the Science Center, Room 232: 11 am–4 pm. Participation takes about 10 min. You earn $5–15. If you are interested in participating, drop by at 11 am, 12 pm, 12:30 pm, 1 pm 1:30 pm, 2 pm, 2:30 pm, 3 pm, or 4 pm.”

  13. Instead using Tobit regression with robust standard errors, to account for the minimum (0) and maximum (100) transfer percentages, gives qualitatively equivalent results. We choose to report OLS results so as to have directly interpretable coefficients.

  14. We consistently find a significant positive effect of female gender on dictator transfer.

  15. ANOVA finds no significant effect of the Game name (p=0.421) or of Recipient information (p=0.233), and no significant interaction between the two (p=0.890).

  16. As mentioned in the Introduction, Dana et al. (2006) do find a significant effect of recipient knowledge on dictator exit behavior.

  17. The benefit of incentives is to reduce noise, whereas the main cost is to introduce bias through hedging. With our large sample small payoffs we think that both problems are small. For recent discussions of the costs and benefits of incentivizing belief elicitation, see Armantier and Treich (2010) and Blanco et al. (2010).

  18. The job was titled “Participate in a brief decision-making study” and the advertisement read “Participate in a brief study. In this HIT, you will be asked to participate in a short decision-making study followed by a brief survey. In addition to your initial payment of $0.20, you will have the opportunity to earn a bonus of up to $1.00, for a total payment of up to $1.20. To begin, please follow the study instructions here (the link will open in a new browser window). At the end of the study, you will be given a unique completion code. Paste the completion code below, and click submit. YOU MUST PASTE THE COMPLETION CODE BELOW TO RECEIVE YOUR BONUS.”

  19. Online labor markets in general, and MTurk in particular, have recently received considerable attention as powerful platforms for performing incentive-compatible experiments. On MTurk, employers hire workers from around the world to complete short tasks for small amounts of money (usually less than $1). This allows researchers to recruit large number of subjects quickly with little effort or expense. Stakes are generally much lower in MTurk experiments than in physical lab experiments, a feature that is partly justified by the much smaller time costs associated with participating. Online experiments also necessarily permit less control over subjects during the study. To address these and other concerns regarding the validity of experiments run on MTurk, a number of replication studies have been undertaken. Most relevant for the present study, the effect of $1 stakes in dictator games on MTurk has been shown to be similar to that in the physical laboratory (Amir et al. 2012), and the same study finds that the average donation is very similar to the most common average transfer across many studies in the recent meta-analysis of Engel 2011. Furthermore, quantitative agreement between behavior on MTurk and in the physical lab has been demonstrated in a one-shot prisoners’ dilemma (Horton et al. 2011) and a repeated 4-player public goods game (Suri and Watts 2011), and it has been shown that subjects on MTurk respond to framing manipulations (Paolacci et al. 2010; Horton et al. 2011).

  20. As in Study 1, instead using Tobit regression gives qualitatively equivalent results.

  21. ANOVA finds no significant effect of Game name (p=0.570) or of Action label (p=0.934), and no significant interaction between the two (p=0.913).

  22. The difference between expected and actual transfers remains non-significant when including only attentive subjects (Rank-sum, p>0.10 for all comparisons).

  23. The job was titled “Short academic study” and the advertisement read “Participate in a short decision-making study. You will make several decisions and answer a very short survey in this study. In total it will take less than 7 minutes. For your participation, you will receive $0.50 plus a bonus of up to $1.00. To begin, please follow the study instructions here (the link will open in a new browser window). At the end of the study, you will be given a unique completion code. Paste the completion code below, and click submit. YOU MUST PASTE THE COMPLETION CODE BELOW FOR YOUR HIT TO BE ACCEPTED.”

  24. While demographic information on MTurk is self-reported, it has been shown that country of residence reporting is reliable based on comparison with IP address (Rand 2012), and that there is a high degree of test-retest reliability for other demographic variables.

  25. The text was as follows: “regular old put-a-stamp-on-it mail. If you can’t be there in person, send a letter. And if you have trouble finding the time, let us help you!”

  26. ANOVA finds no significant effect of Game name (p=0.860) or Recipient information (p=0.171), and no significant interaction between the two (p=0.670).

  27. To the best of our knowledge, this game was first studied by Suleiman (1996).

  28. Note that in terms of modeling, norm ambiguity is better captured by the proposed generalization of (2) than by (2) itself.

  29. Another explanation is that procedures differ in the two studies. We are particularly concerned that subjects in a study conducted by psychologists are suspicious that they are being deceived or that payments are not real. (As it happens, Leliveld, van Dijk, and van Beest deceived their subjects, because they were not playing against another subject at all, and ultimate payments didn’t depend on their behavior, despite instructions to the contrary.) In this case, some subjects may simply decide to neglect the monetary incentives and instead behave either according to some moral norm or as they think that the experimenters desire.

  30. It has been previously demonstrated in the traditional (offline) laboratory that subjects cooperation more when the PD is called the ‘Community game’ relative to the ‘Wall Street game’ (Liberman et al. 2004). In this replication, we used the term ‘Profit game’ instead of ‘Wall Street game’ because of the particular negative valence attached to Wall Street in the mind of (at least) the American public at the time of the experiment.

References

  • Amir, O., Rand, D. G., & Gal, Y. K. (2012). Economic games on the internet: the effect of $1 stakes. PLoS ONE, 7, e31461.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Andreoni, J. (1995). Warm-glow versus cold-prickle: the effects of positive and negative framing on cooperation in experiments. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110, 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Andreoni, J., & Bernheim, B. D. (2009). Social image and the 50–50 norm: A theoretical and experimental analysis of audience effects. Econometrica, 77, 1607–1636.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Andreoni, J., & Miller, J. (2002). Giving according to GARP: an experimental test of the consistency of preferences for altruism. Econometrica, 70, 737–753.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Andreoni, J., & Rao, J. (2011). The power of asking: how communication affects selfishness, empathy, and altruism. Journal of Public Economics, 95, 513–520.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Armantier, O., & Treich, N. (2010). Eliciting beliefs: proper scoring rules, incentives, stakes and hedging. Manuscript.

  • Bacharach, M. (1993). Variable universe games. In K. Binmore, A. Kirmanand, & P. Tani (Eds.), Frontiers of game theory (pp. 255–276). Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bacharach, M. (1999). Interactive team reasoning: A contribution to the theory of co-operation. Research in Economics, 53, 117–147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bardsley, N. (2008). Dictator game giving: altruism or artifact. Experimental Economics, 11, 122–133.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Becker, G. S. (1974). A theory of social interactions. Journal of Political Economy, 82, 1063–1093.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Becker, G. S., & Stigler, G. J. (1977). De gustibus non est disputandum. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 67, 76–90.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bicchieri, C., & Xiao, E. (2009). Do the right thing: but only if others do so. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 22, 191–208.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blanco, M., Engelmann, D., Koch, A., & Normann, H.-T. (2010). Belief elicitation in experiments: is there a hedging problem? Experimental Economics, 13, 412–438.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bohnet, I., & Frey, B. (1999). Social distance and other-regarding behavior: comment. American Economic Review, 89, 335–340.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brandts, J., & Schwieren, C. (2009). Frames and economic behavior: an experimental study. Manuscript, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

  • Brewer, M. B., & Kramer, R. M. (1986). Choice behavior in social dilemmas: effects of social identity, group size, and decision framing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 543–549.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Broberg, T., Ellingsen, T., & Johannesson, M. (2007). Is generosity involuntary? Economics Letters, 94, 32–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Camerer, C. F. (2003). Behavioral game theory: experiments in strategic interaction. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cappelen, A., Hole, A. D., Sørensen, E.Ø., & Tungodden, B. (2007). The pluralism of fairness ideals: an experimental approach. American Economic Review, 97, 818–827.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Charness, G., & Gneezy, U. (2008). What’s in a name? Anonymity and social distance in dictator and ultimatum games. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 68, 29–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cherry, T. L., Frykblom, P., & Shogren, J. F. (2002). Hardnose the dictator. American Economic Review, 92, 1218–1221.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cookson, R. (2000). Framing effects in public goods experiments. Experimental Economics, 3, 55–79.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cubitt, R. P., Drouvelis, M., & Gächter, S. (2011). Framing and free riding: emotional responses and punishment in social dilemma games. Experimental Economics, 14, 254–272.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dana, J., Cain, D. M., & Dawes, R. M. (2006). What you don’t know won’t hurt me: costly but quiet exit in dictator games. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 100, 193–201.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deutsch, M. (1958). Trust and suspicion. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2, 265–279.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deutsch, M. (1960). The effect of motivational disposition on trust and suspicion. Human Relations, 13, 123–139.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dufwenberg, M., Gächter, S., & Hennig-Schmidt, H. (2011). The framing of games and the psychology of play. Games and Economic Behavior, 73, 459–478.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellingsen, T., & Johannesson, M. (2008). Anticipated verbal feedback induces altruistic behavior. Evolution and Human Behavior, 29, 100–105.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellingsen, T., Johannesson, M., Mollerstrom, J., & Munkhammar, S. (2012). Social framing effects: preferences or beliefs? Games and Economic Behavior, 76, 117–130.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellingsen, T., Johannesson, M., Torsvik, G., & Tjøtta, S. (2010). Testing guilt aversion. Games and Economic Behavior, 68, 95–107.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Engel, C. (2011). Dictator games: A meta study. Experimental Economics, 14, 583–610.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fehr, E., & Schmidt, K. (2006). The economics of fairness, reciprocity and altruism—experimental evidence and new theories. In S.-C. Kolm & J. M. Ythier (Eds.), Handbook of the economics of giving, altruism and reciprocity (Vol. 1). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gintis, H. (2007). The evolution of private property. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 64, 1–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haley, K. J., & Fessler, D. M. T. (2005). Nobody’s watching? Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26, 245–256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Handgraaf, M. J. J., van Dijk, E., Vermunt, R. C., Wilke, H. A. M., & De Dreu, C. K. W. (2008). Less power or powerless? Egocentric empathy gaps and the irony of having little or no power in social decision making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1136–1149.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman, E., McCabe, K. A., Shachat, K., & Smith, V. L. (1994). Preferences, property rights, and anonymity in bargaining games. Games and Economic Behavior, 7, 346–380.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Horton, J. J., Rand, D. G., & Zeckhauser, R. J. (2011). The online laboratory: conducting experiments in a real labor market. Experimental Economics, 14, 399–425.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Houser, D., & Xiao, E. (2009). Avoiding the sharp tongue: anticipated written messages promote fair economic exchange. Journal of Economic Psychology, 30, 393–404.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kay, A. C., & Ross, L. (2003). The perceptual push: the interplay of implicit cues and explicit situational construals on behavioral intentions in the Prisoner’s dilemma. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 634–643.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keysar, B., Converse, B. A., Wang, J., & Epley, N. (2008). Reciprocity is not give and take: asymmetric reciprocity to positive and negative acts. Psychological Science, 19, 1280–1286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koch, A., & Norman, H.-T. (2008). Giving in dictator games: regard for others or regard by others? Southern Economic Journal, 75, 223–231.

    Google Scholar 

  • Konow, J. (2010). Mixed feelings: theories and evidence on giving. Journal of Public Economics, 94, 279–297.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kritikos, A., & Bolle, F. (2005). Utility based altruism: experimental evidence. In B. Agarwal & A. Vericelli (Eds.), Psychology, rationality and economic behaviour, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krupka, E., & Weber, R. A. (2009). The focusing and informational effects of norms on pro-social behavior. The Journal of Economic Psychology, 30, 307–320.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krupka, E., & Weber, R. A. (2010). Identifying social norms using coordination games: why does dictator game sharing vary? Manuscript, Carnegie Mellon University.

  • Lazear, E. P., Malmendier, U., & Weber, R. A. (2012). Sorting, prices, and social preferences. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 4(1), 136–163.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leliveld, M. C., van Dijk, E., & van Beest, I. (2008). Ownership in bargaining: introducing the giving, splitting, and taking ultimatum bargaining game. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1214–1225.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levin, I. P., Schneider, S. L., & Gaeth, G. J. (1998). All frames are not created equal: A typology and critical analysis of framing effects. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 76(2), 149–188.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levitt, S., & List, J. (2007). What do laboratory experiments measuring social preferences reveal about the real world? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(2), 151–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liberman, V., Samuels, S. M., & Ross, L. (2004). The name of the game: predictive power of reputations versus situational labels in determining prisoner’s dilemma game moves. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1175–1185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • List, J. (2007). On the interpretation of giving in dictator games. Journal of Political Economy, 115, 482–493.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Loewenstein, G. (1999). Experimental economics from the vantage point of behavioural economics. Economic Journal, 109, F25–F34.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • March, J. (1994). A primer on decision-making: how decisions happen. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCusker, C., & Carnevale, P. J. (1995). Framing in resource dilemmas: loss aversion and the moderating effects on sanctions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 61, 190–201.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McDaniel, W. C., & Sistrunk, F. (1991). Management dilemmas and decisions: impact of framing and anticipated responses. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 35, 21–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mitzkewitz, M., & Nagel, R. (1993). Experimental results on ultimatum games with incomplete information. International Journal of Game Theory, 22, 171–198.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mohlin, E., & Johannesson, M. (2008). Communication: content or relationship? Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 65, 409–419.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Montgomery, J. D. (1998). Toward a role-theoretic conception of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 104, 92–125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Paolacci, G., Chandler, J., & Ipeirotis, P. G. (2010). Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Judgment and Decision Making, 5, 411–419.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pillutla, M. M., & Chen, X. (1999). Social norms and cooperation in social dilemmas: the effects of context and feedback. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 78(2), 81–103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rabin, M. (1998). Psychology and economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 36, 11–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rand, D. G. (2012). The promise of Mechanical Turk: how online labor markets can help theorists run behavioral experiments. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 299, 172–179.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rege, M., & Telle, K. (2004). The impact of social approval and framing on cooperation in public good situations. Journal of Public Economics, 88, 1625–1644.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rigdon, M., Ishii, K., Watabe, M., & Kitayama, S. (2009). Minimal social cues in the dictator game. Journal of Economic Psychology, 30, 358–367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salant, Y., & Rubinstein, A. (2008). (A, f): choice with frames. Review of Economic Studies, 75, 1287–1296.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sell, J., & Son, Y. (1997). Comparing public goods and common pool resources: three experiments. Social Psychology Quarterly, 60, 118–137.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sobel, J. (2005). Interdependent preferences and reciprocity. Journal of Economic Literature, 43, 392–436.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sonnemans, J., Schram, A., & Offerman, T. (1998). Public good provision and public bad prevention: the effect of framing. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 34, 143–161.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Suleiman, R. (1996). Expectations and fairness in a modified ultimatum game. Journal of Economic Psychology, 17, 531–554.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stake, J. E. (2004). The property ‘instinct’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 359, 1763–1774.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sugden, R. (1993). Thinking as a team: towards an explanation of nonselfish behavior. Social Philosophy and Policy, 10, 69–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Suri, S., & Watts, D. J. (2011). Cooperation and contagion in networked public goods experiments. PLoS ONE, 6, e16836.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Suvoy, R. (2003). The effects of give and take framing in a dictator game. Unpublished Honors Thesis, University of Oregon.

  • Tadelis, S. (2008). The power of shame and the rationality of trust. Manuscript, University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business.

  • Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211, 453–458.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Dijk, E., & Wilke, H. (2000). Decision-induced focusing in social dilemmas: Give-some, keep-some, take-some, and leave-some dilemmas. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 92–104.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weber, J. M., et al. (2004). A conceptual review of decision making in social dilemmas: applying a logic of appropriateness. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 281–307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xiao, E., & Houser, D. (2005). Emotion expression in human punishment behavior. PNAS, 102, 7398–7401.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhong, C.-B., Loewenstein, J., & Murnighan, J. K. (2007). Speaking the same language: the cooperative effects of μ in the prisoners’ dilemma. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 51, 431–456.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Rachel Sheketoff, Nils Wernerfelt and Xiaoqi Zhou for research assistance and to Jordi Brandts and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. Financial support from the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation and the Swedish Research Council is gratefully acknowledged, and DGR is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tore Ellingsen.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

(DOCX 248 kB)

Appendix: Framing in a one-shot prisoners’ dilemma on MTurk

Appendix: Framing in a one-shot prisoners’ dilemma on MTurk

To demonstrate the presence of framing effects on MTurk in games where both subjects make a decision, we recruited 400 subjects from MTurk in February 2011 to play a modified one-shot Prisoners’ dilemma game. Subjects were randomly allocated to one of two framing treatments. All subjects were paid a show-up fee of 25 cents. The study took on average 4 minutes to complete.

Subjects were informed that they were playing either the ‘Community game’ or the ‘Profit game.’Footnote 30 Then they read identical instructions for the following Prisoners’ dilemma, indicated their decision (A or B), and completed a post-experimental questionnaire.

$$\begin{array}{@{}l@{\quad}l@{\quad}l@{}} &\mathrm{A}& \mathrm{B}\\ \mathrm{A}& \$0.15,\ \$0.15 &\$0,\ \$0.20\\ \mathrm{B}& \$0.20,\ \$0 &\$0.05,\ \$0.05 \end{array} $$

Unlike in our Dictator game experiments, we do find substantial variation in Prisoners’ dilemma cooperation across treatments (Community game: 65 % cooperation, Profit game: 58 % cooperation). To test for effects of the game name, we use logistic regression with robust standard errors, taking decision to cooperate (i.e. choose option ‘A’) as the dependent variable, and including controls for gender, age and country of residence. We find a negative effect of the ‘Profit game’ frame on cooperation (coeff=−0.446, p=0.043; Table 5).

Table 5 The effect of game name in a Prisoner’s dilemma

Thus we show that framing effects do occur on MTurk in games where both players make a decision. This supports our conclusion that the lack of framing effects in our Dictator games is the result of the unilateral nature of the dictator game decision setting.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Dreber, A., Ellingsen, T., Johannesson, M. et al. Do people care about social context? Framing effects in dictator games. Exp Econ 16, 349–371 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-012-9341-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-012-9341-9

Keywords

JEL Classification

Navigation