Event Details

Seminar hosted by the Economics Department

Subhasish Chodhury will present a Seminar on "The art of exploiting emotion: pre-play communications in Dictator Games"

Abstract : We investigate the subtle effects of pre-play communications in dictator games, and aim to find whether (i) recipients try to manipulate dictator behavior with communication, and (ii) dictators are affected by such communications. A recipient can send a message of an amount he/she would expect from a dictator, and the dictator may receive the message before his/her decision. Since who therecipient communicates with and the framing of the game can affect dictator’s giving, we vary two factors: framing (giving vs. taking) and target of communication (message sent to the experimenter vs. to the dictator). Furthermore, when the message is sent to the dictator, depending on the treatment the message reaches the target with certainty or with some uncertainty. We find four main results. First, communication does influence altruistic behavior, but there exist significant framing effects: the amount expected affects recipient payoff significantly in a giving frame but not in a taking frame. Second, greed fires back: if the recipient sends message expecting at most half of the endowment, then such expectation has a positive effect on dictator giving. However, if the expectation is more than the half, then the dictator gives a much lesser amount. Third, the recipients use the message strategically: they send a higher amount of expectation when the message goes to the dictator versus when it goes to the experimenter. Finally, uncertainly matters in the giving game: the recipients send message with higher expected amount when the dictator receives the message with some uncertainty in the giving frame but not in the taking frame. When such uncertainty exists, then dictator giving is not affected specifically by high expectations.