Experiments on norm focusing and losses in dictator games

Ivo Windrich; Sabrina Kierspel; Thomas Neumann; Roger Berger; Bodo Vogt

doi:10.3389/fsoc.2022.930976

Experiments on norm focusing and losses in dictator games

Front Sociol. 2022 Aug 26:7:930976. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2022.930976. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Ivo Windrich¹, Sabrina Kierspel², Thomas Neumann^{2

3

4}, Roger Berger¹, Bodo Vogt^{2

5

6}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Sociology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
² Chair in Empirical Economics, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany.
³ University Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany.
⁴ Chair in Health Services Research, School of Life Sciences, University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany.
⁵ Chair in Health Economics, Institute of Social Medicine and Health Economics, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany.
⁶ Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences (CBBS), Magdeburg, Germany.

Abstract

We conducted experiments on norm focusing. The tests were carried out with two versions of dictator games: in one version of the game, the dictator had to allocate a gain of €10, while in the other version, a loss of €-10 needs to be allocated. In a first treatment, we focused subjects on the average giving in similar previous dictator games. The second treatment focused subjects on the behaviour of what a self-interested actor should do. In total, N = 550 participants took part in our experiments. We found (1) a significant difference in giving behaviour between gain and loss treatments, with subjects being moderately more self-interested in the loss domain, (2) a significant effect of focusing subjects on the average behaviour of others, but (3) no effect of focusing subjects on the behaviour of self-interested actors.

Keywords: descriptive norms; dictator game; fairness norms; loss attention; loss aversion; losses; norm focusing.