Motivated Motive Selection

2018-12-03

2018-12-14

Dummy variable for whether participants selected the equality motive in part 2.
Dummy variable for whether participants selected the truth-telling motive in part 2.

Difference in the appropriateness score of the (1) truth-telling and (2) equality motive in part 3.

We use a laboratory experiment that shares a common basic structure with both the classic dictator game and the Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi (2013) lying game. In part 1 of the experiment, participants take on the role of the dictator and report a number that determines their payment and the payment of the recipient. In part 2 of the experiment, participants take on the role of a third-party dictator. In part 3, we elicit the social appropriateness of different choices in part 2 in an incentive-compatible way.

The experiment proceeds in three parts. For Part 1 and Part 2, participants are randomly assigned to one of two groups – Active and Passive players. There are 4 Passive players per session, and up to 20 Active players, depending on the number of participants who show up for a given session.

Part 1 involves a first party lying/dictator game in which Active participants are matched into pairs of two. Each member of the pair first draws a random number by clicking on one of eleven boxes on her screen (as in Gneezy, Kajackaite and Sobel, 2018). This therefore involves a random draw from a uniformly distributed variable with support {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10}. After the random draw, participants are asked to report the number they saw. They can do so in one of four ways:

(1) Tell the truth and report: “The number I saw was [number seen].”
(2) Equalize payments and report: “The number I saw was 5.”
(3) Maximize your payment and report: “The number I saw was 10.”
(4) Maximize the other participant’s payment and report: “The number I saw was 0.”

As in the lying game (Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi, 2013), the subject will be paid the value of the number she reports, € r. As in the dictator game, any remaining money € 10-r will be sent to her matched partner. One choice out of every pair (revealed at the end of the session) is randomly determined to be payoff relevant. Participants know that if their choice is payoff relevant, their report will be communicated to the recipient. Participants also know that after making their report they will be asked to provide a short written explanation for why they chose the motive. Passive players make no decisions in part 1, though they are able to read the Active players’ instructions.
Part 2 involves a third party lying/dictator game in which Active participants play a game that is similar to Part 1. The key difference is that instead of choosing a payoff allocation between themselves and another participant, they are now choosing a payoff allocation between two Passive players. Otherwise, the game is the same – participants are asked to click on one of the eleven boxes to reveal a random number, and report the number in one of four ways:

(1) Tell the truth and report: “The number I saw was [number seen].
(2) Equalize payments and report: “The number I saw was 5.”
(3) Maximize passive player A’s payment and report: “The number I saw was 10.”
(4) Maximize passive player B’s payment and report: “The number I saw was 0.”

At the end of the experiment, two of the Active players’ reports are randomly chosen to be implemented, one for each pair of Passive players.

Part 3 involves a Krupka and Weber (2013) norm elicitation task in which participants are asked to evaluate how “socially appropriate” each of the four possible reports in Part 2 are. Specifically, we ask participants to consider the four possible reports made by a hypothetical participant with a random draw of 8. At the end of the experiment the computer then randomly draws one of the four evaluations to be payoff relevant. Participants are then paid € 2 if their choice is the modal choice within the session (any ties are broken randomly).

References:
Fischbacher, Urs and Franziska Föllmi-Heusi. 2013. ”Lies in Disguise—An Experimental Study on Cheating.” Journal of the European Economic Association, 11(3): 525-547.
Gneezy, Uri, Agne Kajackaite, and Joel Sobel. 2018. "Lying Aversion and the Size of the Lie." American Economic Review, 108(2): 419-53.
Krupka, Erin L., and Roberto A. Weber. 2013. "Identifying social norms using coordination games: Why does dictator game sharing vary?." Journal of the European Economic Association, 11(3): 495-524.

Random number drawn by a computer

Individual

No

140 individuals (approximately 116 Active and 24 Passive players)

140 individuals (approximately 116 Active and 24 Passive players)

50 Individuals (estimated)

See the attached power calculations for details

An extensive literature documents that people are willing to sacrifice personal material gain to adhere to a moral motive. However, less is known about the psychological mechanisms that operate when two moral motives come into conflict. We hypothesize that individuals engage in “moral motive selection,” adhering to the moral motive that aligns with their self-interest. We test this hypothesis using a laboratory experiment that induces a conflict between two of the most-studied moral motives: fairness and truth-telling. Consistent with our hypothesis, our results show that individuals prefer to adhere to the moral motive that is more aligned with
their self-interest.

Barron, Kai and Stüber, Robert and Veldhuizen, Roel van, Moral Motive Selection in the Lying-Dictator Game (2022). CESifo Working Paper No. 9911, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4215030 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4215030

https://ssrn.com/abstract=4215030 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4215030