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The role of role uncertainty in modified dictator games

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Nagore Iriberri  and
Pedro Rey-Biel
Nagore Iriberri*
Affiliation:
Departament d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramón Trías Fargas 25-27, 08005 Barcelona, Spain
Pedro Rey-Biel*
Affiliation:
Department d'Economia i d'Historia Econòmica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain
*
e-mail: nagore.iriberri@upf.edu
e-mail: pedro.rey@uab.es
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Abstract

We compare behavior in modified dictator games with and without role uncertainty. Subjects choose between a selfish action, a costly surplus creating action (altruistic behavior) and a costly surplus destroying action (spiteful behavior). While costly surplus creating actions are the most frequent under role uncertainty (64%), selfish actions become the most frequent without role uncertainty (69%). Also, the frequency of surplus destroying choices is negligible with role uncertainty (1%) but not so without it (11%). A classification of subjects into four different types of interdependent preferences (Selfish, Social Welfare maximizing, Inequity Averse and Competitive) shows that the use of role uncertainty overestimates the prevalence of Social Welfare maximizing preferences in the subject population (from 74% with role uncertainty to 21% without it) and underestimates Selfish and Inequity Averse preferences. An additional treatment, in which subjects undertake an understanding test before participating in the experiment with role uncertainty, shows that the vast majority of subjects (93%) correctly understand the payoff mechanism with role uncertainty, but yet surplus creating actions were most frequent. Our results warn against the use of role uncertainty in experiments that aim to measure the prevalence of interdependent preferences.

Keywords

Role uncertaintyRole reversalInterdependent preferencesSocial welfare maximizingInequity aversionMixture-of-types modelsStrategy methodExperiments

JEL classification

C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior D81: Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty C72: Noncooperative Games
Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. 160 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © Economic Science Association 2010

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