Your Morals Are Your Moods

Georg Kirchsteiger, Luca Rigotti and Aldo Rustichini.
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Luca Rigotti, Georg Kirchsteiger and Aldo Rustichini

No E01-294Rev, Economics Working Papers from University of California at Berkeley

Abstract: We test the effect of players' moods on their behavior in a gift-exchange game. In the first stage of the game, player 1 chooses a transfer to player 2. In the second stage, player 2 chooses an effort level. Higher effort is more costly for player 2, but it increases player 1's payoff. We say that player 2 reciprocates if effort is increasing in the transfer received. Player 2 is generous if an effort is incurred even when no transfer is received. Subjects play this game in two different moods. To induce a `bad mood', subjects in the role of player 2 watched a sad movie before playing the game; to induce a `good mood', they watched a funny movie. Mood induction was effective: subjects who saw the funny movie reported a significantly better mood than those who saw the sad movie. These two moods lead to significant differences in player 2's behavior. We find that a bad mood implies more reciprocity while a good mood implies more generosity. Since high transfers are relatively more common, player 1 makes more money when second movers are in a bad mood.

Date: 2001-01-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/groups/iber/wps/econ/E01-294Rev.pdf main text (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/groups/iber/wps/econ/E01-294Rev.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> http://haas.berkeley.edu/groups/iber/wps/econ/E01-294Rev.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Your Morals Are Your Moods (2001)
Working Paper: Your Morals Are Your Moods (2001)
Working Paper: Your Morals are Your Moods (2000)
Working Paper: Your Morals are Your Moods (2000)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucb:calbwp:e01-294rev

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IBER, F502 Haas Building, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720-1922

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from University of California at Berkeley University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().