American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Conveniently Upset: Avoiding Altruism by Distorting Beliefs about Others' Altruism
American Economic Review
vol. 105,
no. 11, November 2015
(pp. 3416–42)
Abstract
We present results from a "corruption game" (a dictator game modified so that recipients can take a side payment in exchange for accepting a reduction in the overall size of the pie). Dictators (silently) treated to be able to take more of the recipient's tokens, took more of them. They were also more likely to believe that recipients had accepted side payments, even if there was a prize for accuracy. The results favor the hypothesis that people avoid altruistic actions by distorting beliefs about others' altruism. (JEL C72, D63, D64, D83)Citation
Di Tella, Rafael, Ricardo Perez-Truglia, Andres Babino, and Mariano Sigman. 2015. "Conveniently Upset: Avoiding Altruism by Distorting Beliefs about Others' Altruism." American Economic Review 105 (11): 3416–42. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20141409Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C72 Noncooperative Games
- D63 Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
- D64 Altruism; Philanthropy
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness