RESUMEN
In Dictator Games, dictators decide how much of a given endowment to send to receivers with no further interactions. We explored the social inferences people draw about dictators from the dictators' money amount sent and vice versa in 11 experiments (N = 1,425): Participants rated "unfair" dictators, who sent little or no money, as more agentic, but less communal than "fair" dictators, who sent half of the endowment. Conversely, participants expected more agentic and conservative but less communal dictators to send less money than less agentic, more liberal, or more communal dictators. Participants also rated unfair dictators as less intelligent but expected less intelligent dictators to send more money. When participants played the Dictator Game with real money, only self-reported communion predicted the money amount sent. Thus, participants' inferences might not reflect reality, but rational social actors should not only fear to appear unfair but also unintelligent.
Asunto(s)
Administración Financiera , Juegos Experimentales , Humanos , InteligenciaRESUMEN
This research investigates the role of social distance between decision makers and their clients. In 11 experiments (total N = 1,653), participants decided about unfair and hyper-fair offers in an advisor game for themselves or for a client who varied in social distance (e.g., for a close friend vs. a stranger). Participants were strongly influenced by client identity. They systematically accepted more hyper-fair offers for themselves and close clients than for distant clients, while client identity played no role in unfair offers. We show that the driving mechanism of this client privileging effect is joy (happy-for-ness) participants experience particularly for close clients, while envy did not explain this effect. Across all types of clients and experiments, hyper-fair offers were accepted at only 86% which can only be explained by participants being not exclusively motivated by absolute monetary payoffs but also, to some extent, factoring in nonmonetary concerns.