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Field
Investigator
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Before
Andrew Kao
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After
Leonardo Bursztyn
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Field
Abstract
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Before
People’s preference to make own decisions rather than being dominated by others is at the heart of liberal democracies. This aversion to dominance might be impeded by threats to their physical safety, economic status, or gender and racial identity. We study the extent to which individuals prefer not to be dominated using three measure: (1) Directly measuring willingness to pay to avoid being “dominated,” or yielding control over some aspect of their lives to another party, via an experiment called the “Boss Game,” (2) Eliciting willingness to donate to anti-authoritarian causes, and (3) Survey data on preferences for authoritarianism. We examine whether people’s aversion to being dominated is weakened when their physical and economic safety, and identity are threatened.
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After
People’s preference for making their own decisions rather than being dominated by others is at the heart of liberal democracies. This aversion to dominance might be reduced by threats to their physical safety, economic status, or gender and racial identity. We study the extent to which individuals prefer not to be dominated using three measure: (1) Directly measuring willingness to pay to avoid being “dominated,” or yielding control over some aspect of their lives to another party, via an experiment called the “Boss Game,” (2) Eliciting willingness to donate to anti-authoritarian causes, and (3) Survey data on preferences for authoritarianism. We examine whether people’s aversion to being dominated is weakened when their physical and economic safety, and identity are threatened.
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Field
Trial Start Date
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Before
February 01, 2018
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After
October 01, 2018
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Field
JEL Code(s)
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Before
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After
D91
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Field
Last Published
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Before
September 21, 2018 12:05 AM
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After
September 21, 2018 05:41 PM
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Field
Intervention Start Date
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Before
September 24, 2018
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After
October 01, 2018
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Field
Intervention End Date
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Before
October 08, 2018
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After
October 20, 2018
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Field
Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
Study participants will be recruited on MTurk, restricting the subject pool to white males. The graph here (https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1XHCmxqlYrxklXBPes0YUMwQTelrK_E6TFwalLzAX45o/edit?usp=sharing) shows an overview of the experimental design.
Upon asking simple demographics, participants are given one of the following information treatments:
- The placebo treatment consists of informing subjects about the timing of the invention of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
- The physical safety threat informs subjects about the potential danger indicated by the Doomsday Clock being moved closer to midnight.
- The racial identity threat informs subjects about prominent states and cities where racial minorities outnumber whites.
- The male identity threat informs subjects that the share of households in which women earn more than their husband has increased.
- The economic threat informs subjects that a large proportion of jobs are at risk of automation.
In the Boss Game, subjects asked to choose between i) a computer deciding the allocation of $1 randomly to either the subject or to another subject; ii) another person making the same allocation decision without knowledge of any information about the two subjects. Using a multiple price list, we elicit participants' willingness to pay (from an additional $2 endowment) to implement either option i) or ii).
In the Donation, we ask subjects whether they would like to donate $0.50 from an endowment of $1 to the WWF and the ACLU, respectively.
Finally, two survey questions measure authoritarianism from WVS/EVS and TAPS.
The intended sample size includes 1,500 white males, though we will restrict our sample to a subset of individuals who pass a screening test for bots/careless respondents.
We hypothesize that:
- Subjects will exhibit a positive average willingness to pay to avoid being dominated as measured by the “Boss Game”
- Subjects in the treatment groups will be willing to pay less to avoid being dominated than the placebo group.
- Subjects in the treatment groups will be less willing to donate to anti-authoritarian causes than the placebo group.
- Subjects in the treatment groups will be more willing to explicitly state a preference for authoritarianism in survey questions
We will examine the effects of each treatment separately, and hence oversample the placebo group (2x size). We will also consider a specification that pools all treatment groups and compares them to the control group jointly.
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After
Study participants will be recruited on MTurk, restricting the subject pool to white males. The graph here (https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1XHCmxqlYrxklXBPes0YUMwQTelrK_E6TFwalLzAX45o/edit?usp=sharing) shows an overview of the experimental design.
Upon asking simple demographics, participants are given one of the following information treatments:
- The placebo treatment consists of informing subjects about the timing of the invention of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
- The physical safety threat informs subjects about the potential danger indicated by the Doomsday Clock being moved closer to midnight.
- The racial identity threat informs subjects about prominent states and cities where racial minorities outnumber whites.
- The male identity threat informs subjects that the share of households in which women earn more than their husband has increased.
- The economic threat informs subjects that a large proportion of jobs are at risk of automation.
In the Boss Game, subjects asked to choose between i) a computer deciding the allocation of $1 randomly to either the subject or to another subject; ii) another person making the same allocation decision without knowledge of any information about the two subjects. Using a multiple price list, we elicit participants' willingness to pay (from an additional $2 endowment) to implement either option i) or ii).
In the Donation, we ask subjects whether they would like to donate $0.50 from an endowment of $1 to the WWF and the ACLU, respectively.
Finally, one survey question measures authoritarianism from either WVS/EVS or TAPS.
We will adopt several procedures to screen out bots, inattentive survey-takers, and repeat respondents. As preconditions for taking our survey, we will require that participants have an approval rate of over 95% across at least 50 MTurk HITs, that they are located in the United States, and that they have not completed a pilot for this experiment in the past. At the beginning of the survey, we will elicit demographics (including race/ethnicity) and we will include an ``instructional manipulation check'' (Oppenheimer, Meyvis, and Davidenko 2007), i.e. a misleading multiple-choice question designed to identify bots and inattentive participants. Only white males who correctly answer the instructional manipulation check will continue with the survey. The rest of the participants will be dropped before randomization occurs, and thus will not affect the balance of our group sizes. At the end of the survey, we will include an open-ended, free-response question within the survey asking the participants to write a few sentences on a particular topic. We will then screen out responses that are clearly generated by bots. Such ex post screening may affect the balance of our group sizes, but we anticipate that the number of participants who correctly answer the instructional manipulation check but who incorrectly respond to this question will be very small.
We hypothesize that:
- Subjects will exhibit a positive average willingness to pay to avoid being dominated as measured by the “Boss Game”
- Subjects in the treatment groups will be willing to pay less to avoid being dominated than the placebo group.
- Subjects in the treatment groups will be less willing to donate to anti-authoritarian causes than the placebo group.
- Subjects in the treatment groups will be more willing to explicitly state a preference for authoritarianism in survey questions
We will examine the effects of each treatment separately, and hence oversample the placebo group (2x size). We will also consider a specification that pools all treatment groups and compares them to the control group jointly.
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Field
Keyword(s)
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Before
Gender, Governance
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After
Gender, Governance, Welfare
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