Conveniently Upset: Avoiding Altruism by Distorting Beliefs About Others / Rafael Di Tella, Ricardo Pérez-Truglia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Di Tella, Rafael.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Pérez-Truglia, Ricardo.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w16645.

NBER working paper series no. w16645

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Conveniently Upset

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2010.

Summary:

In this paper we present the results from a "corruption game" (a dictator game modified so that the second player can accept a side payment that reduces the overall size of the pie). Dictators (silently) treated to have the possibility of taking a larger proportion of the recipient's tokens, take more of them. They were also more likely to report believing that the recipient would accept a low price in exchange for a side payment; and selected larger numbers as their best guess of the likely proportion of recipients acting "unfairly". The results favor the hypothesis that people avoid altruistic actions by distorting beliefs about others.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2010.