Affect and Fairness

Jonathan Schulz (), Urs Fischbacher, Christian Thöni and Verena Utikal ()

No 68, TWI Research Paper Series from Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz

Abstract: We investigate the role of affect and deliberation on social preferences. In our laboratory experiment subjects decide on a series of mini Dictator games while they are under varying degrees of cognitive load. The cognitive load is intended to decrease deliberation and therefore enhance the influence of affect on behavior. In each game subjects have two options: they can decide between a fair or an unfair allocation. We find that subjects in a high-load condition are more generous - they more often choose the fair allocation than subjects in a low-load condition. The series of mini Dictator games also allows us to investigate how subjects react to the games� varying levels of advantageous inequality. Low-load subjects react considerably more to the degree of advantageous inequality. Our results therefore underscore the importance of affect for basic altruistic behavior and deliberation in adjusting decisions to a given situation.

Keywords: social preferences; cognitive load; affect and emotion; lab experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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