Humans expect generosity
Publisher:
Nature Publishing Group
Issued date:
2017-02-14
Citation:
Brañas-Garza, P., Rodríguez-Lara, I. y Sánchez, A. (2017). Humans expect generosity. Scientific Reports, 7, 42446.
ISSN:
2045-2322
xmlui.dri2xhtml.METS-1.0.item-contributor-funder:
European Commission
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España)
Sponsor:
This project has been circulating over the last years under different titles. We greatly appreciate the comments and suggestions of James Andreoni, Jeffrey Butler, Antonio Cabrales, Valerio Capraro, Gary Charness, Maripaz Espinosa, John List, Luis Miller, Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, David Rand, Jean-Robert Tyran, as well as insights from participants at the French Economic Association Meeting (Lyon), SIG Max Planck Institute (Jena), the SEET Meeting, and Alhambra Meets Colosseo Meeting (Rome). We are also thankful to attendees of seminars in Bar-Ilan University, fae2-Bilbao, Middlesex University London and University of Exeter. Luis Lopez-Lemus provided excellent assistance during the experimental sessions run in Mexico, and Mark Houssart was very useful in proofreading the manuscript. This work was partially supported by the EU through FET-Proactive Project DOLFINS (contract no. 640772, A.S.) and FET-Open Project IBSEN (contract no. 662725, A.S.), grant ECO2013-44879-R from the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (Spain), grant FIS2015-64349-P (MINECO/FEDER, UE) and grant P12.SEJ.01436 from Junta de Andalucía (Spain).
Project:
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/640772
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/662725
Gobierno de España. ECO2013-44879-R
Gobierno de España. FIS2015-64349-P
Rights:
© 2017 Nature Publishing Group.
Atribución 3.0 España
Abstract:
Mechanisms supporting human ultra-cooperativeness are very much subject to debate. One psychological feature likely to be relevant is the formation of expectations, particularly about receiving cooperative or generous behavior from others. Without such expecta
Mechanisms supporting human ultra-cooperativeness are very much subject to debate. One psychological feature likely to be relevant is the formation of expectations, particularly about receiving cooperative or generous behavior from others. Without such expectations, social life will be seriously impeded and, in turn, expectations leading to satisfactory interactions can become norms and institutionalize cooperation. In this paper, we assess people's expectations of generosity in a series of controlled experiments using the dictator game. Despite differences in respective roles, involvement in the game, degree of social distance or variation of stakes, the results are conclusive: subjects seldom predict that dictators will behave selfishly (by choosing the Nash equilibrium action, namely giving nothing). The majority of subjects expect that dictators will choose the equal split. This implies that generous behavior is not only observed in the lab, but also expected by subjects. In addition, expectations are accurate, matching closely the donations observed and showing that as a society we have a good grasp of how we interact. Finally, correlation between expectations and actual behavior suggests that expectations can be an important ingredient of generous or cooperative behavior.
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