Michael Nuwer wrote: > I am not such an expert, but I have read a bit of this literature.
thanks! > 1) The dictator game is a variation of the "ultimatum game." In these > games, the player who makes the offer is the "Allocator" and the other > player is the "Recipient." In the Dictator version the Recipient must > accept whatever unilateral offer the Allocator makes. In the ultimatum > game the Recipient has the option to reject or accept the offer. right. > 2) My guess about the behaviorist response to Levitt and List is > something like this: Although one might interpret the "Allocator's" > action as trying to win the approval of the experimenter, it is less > reasonable, in the ultimatum version, to interpret the "Recipient's" > action in the same way. The Recipient in the experiment is given the > ability to accept or reject the Allocator's offer. If the offer is > rejected neither player gets any payoff. It is common for recipients to > reject offers that are positive but unfair allocations. For a $10 stake, > $1 and $3 offers have been rejected. In general, offers less than 20% of > the stake are frequently rejected. The Recipient sacrifices a positive > payoff and punishes the other player for acting unfairly. what I was thinking about was that there may be ways of organizing these experiments to avoid the pollution of the Allocator's motives by the need to please the Experimenter. Has anyone put such an experimental design into practice? BTW, in the Science section of Tuesday's New York TIMES (which is the main reason I sub to that rag -- making up for its lack of comics), there's a story about how experiments indicate that chimps lack the same sense of fairness that we do. As the paper notes, that may be a good thing in some ways. (Did I post that article to pen-l? My memory fails...) -- Jim Devine / "The truth is at once less sinister and more dangerous." -- Naomi Klein.
