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Field
Abstract
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Before
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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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 measures: (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 and political engagement. 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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Trial Start Date
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Before
October 01, 2018
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After
October 23, 2018
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Last Published
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Before
September 21, 2018 05:41 PM
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After
October 23, 2018 04:08 PM
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Intervention Start Date
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Before
October 01, 2018
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After
October 23, 2018
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Intervention End Date
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Before
October 20, 2018
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After
November 05, 2018
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Field
Primary Outcomes (End Points)
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Before
1. Willingness to pay (boss game)
2. Donations
3. Authoritarianism survey
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After
1. Willingness to pay (Boss Game)
2. Donations
3. Authoritarianism and political engagement survey
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Field
Primary Outcomes (Explanation)
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Before
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.
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After
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 option i) rather than option ii).
In the Donation, we ask subjects whether they would like to donate $0.50 from an endowment of $1 to the WWF and to the ACLU, respectively.
Finally, one survey question measuring authoritarianism from TAPS and two survey questions capturing subjects' voting intentions.
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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, 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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After
Study participants will be recruited through TurkPrime, restricting the subject pool to Republican 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 Treatment informs subjects about the potential danger indicated by the Doomsday Clock being moved closer to midnight.
- The Racial Identity Threat Treatment informs subjects about prominent states and cities where racial minorities outnumber whites.
- The Male Identity Threat Treatment informs subjects that the share of households in which women earn more than their husband has increased.
- The Economic Threat Treatment informs subjects that a large proportion of jobs are at risk of automation.
We collect posteriors relating to the treatments and ask about their opinion regarding their general level of concern for the country.
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 option i) rather than option ii).
In the Donation, we ask subjects whether they would like to donate $0.50 from an endowment of $1 to the WWF and to the ACLU, respectively.
Finally, one survey question measuring authoritarianism from TAPS, two survey questions capturing subjects' voting intentions, and posteriors regarding the other treatments not assigned to the subject.
We will adopt several procedures to screen out bots, inattentive survey-takers, and repeat respondents. TurkPrime ensures that respondents fit our demographic criteria of Republican white males located in the United States. TurkPrime also excludes low-effort submissions and speeders, as well as individuals who have completed a pilot of 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.
We hypothesize that:
- Subjects will exhibit a positive average willingness to pay to avoid being dominated as measured by participants' willingness to pay to play game (i) rather than game (ii) in 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, and to express an intention to donate to the Republican party
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.
Note:
We updated the pre-registration in order to change the survey platform from MTurk to TurkPrime. We made this change since TurkPrime is better suited to filter out non-target demographics and bots/careless responders than MTurk. We also included an additional component measuring voting intention and political engagement. These changes were made before any subjects participated in the experiment.
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Planned Number of Clusters
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Before
1500 individuals
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After
1200 individuals
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Planned Number of Observations
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Before
1500 individuals
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After
1200 individuals
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Field
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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Before
500 placebo, 250 for each treatment
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After
400 placebo, 200 for each treatment
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