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Self-selection and variations in the laboratory measurement of other-regarding preferences across subject pools: evidence from one college student and two adult samples

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Jon Anderson ,
Stephen V. Burks ,
Jeffrey Carpenter ,
Lorenz Götte ,
Karsten Maurer ,
Daniele Nosenzo ,
Ruth Potter ,
Kim Rocha  and
Aldo Rustichini
Jon Anderson
Affiliation:
Division of Science and Mathematics, University of Minnesota Morris, 600 East 4th Street, Morris, MN 56267, USA
Stephen V. Burks
Affiliation:
Division of Social Science, University of Minnesota Morris, 600 East 4th Street, Morris, MN 56267, USA IZA, P.O. Box 7240, 53027 Bonn, Germany CeDEx, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK
Jeffrey Carpenter
Affiliation:
IZA, P.O. Box 7240, 53027 Bonn, Germany Department of Economics, Middlebury College, Warner Hall, 303 College Street, Middlebury, VT 05753, USA
Lorenz Götte
Affiliation:
IZA, P.O. Box 7240, 53027 Bonn, Germany Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Lausanne, Internef, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Karsten Maurer
Affiliation:
Department of Statistics, Iowa State University, Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA 50012, USA
Daniele Nosenzo*
Affiliation:
School of Economics, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK CeDEx, University of Nottingham, University Park, NG7 2RD Nottingham, UK
Ruth Potter
Affiliation:
Division of Science and Mathematics, University of Minnesota Morris, 600 East 4th Street, Morris, MN 56267, USA
Kim Rocha
Affiliation:
Division of Science and Mathematics, University of Minnesota Morris, 600 East 4th Street, Morris, MN 56267, USA
Aldo Rustichini
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 4-101 Hanson Hall, 1925 4th Street S, Minneapolis 55455, MN, USA Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, CB3 9DD Cambridge, UK
*
daniele.nosenzo@nottingham.ac.uk
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Abstract

We measure the other-regarding behavior in samples from three related populations in the upper Midwest of the United States: college students, non-student adults from the community surrounding the college, and adult trainee truckers in a residential training program. The use of typical experimental economics recruitment procedures made the first two groups substantially self-selected. Because the context reduced the opportunity cost of participating dramatically, 91 % of the adult trainees solicited participated, leaving little scope for self-selection in this sample. We find no differences in the elicited other-regarding preferences between the self-selected adults and the adult trainees, suggesting that selection is unlikely to bias inferences about the prevalence of other-regarding preferences among non-student adult subjects. Our data also reject the more specific hypothesis that approval-seeking subjects are the ones most likely to select into experiments. Finally, we observe a large difference between self-selected college students and self-selected adults: the students appear considerably less pro-social.

Keywords

MethodologySelection biasLaboratory experimentField experimentOther-regarding behaviorSocial preferencesPrisoner’s dilemmaTruckloadTrucker

JEL classification

C90: General
Type
Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , June 2013 , pp. 170 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic Supplementary Material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-012-9327-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Appendix A: Instruction Script for the Social Dilemma Experiment
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