Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests

Gary Charness and Matthew Rabin

Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley

Abstract: Departures from self-interest in economic experiments have recently inspired models of “social preferences”. We design a range of simple experimental games that test these theories more directly than existing experiments. Our experiments show that subjects are more concerned with increasing social welfare—sacrificing to increase the payoffs for all recipients, especially low-payoff recipients—than with reducing differences in payoffs (as supposed in recent models). Subjects are also motivated by reciprocity: They withdraw willingness to sacrifice to achieve a fair outcome when others are themselves unwilling to sacrifice, and sometimes punish unfair behavior.

Keywords: difference aversion; fairness; inequity aversion; social welfare; non-ultimatum games; reciprocal fairness; social preferences; ultimatum games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-06-02
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2491)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests (2003)
Journal Article: Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests (2002)
Working Paper: Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests (2001)
Working Paper: UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL PREFERENCES WITH SIMPLE TESTS (2001)
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