Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-g9frx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-16T16:36:07.782Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The role of cognitive ability and personality traits for men and women in gift exchange outcomes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Emel Filiz-Ozbay ,
John C. Ham ,
John H. Kagel  and
Erkut Y. Ozbay
Emel Filiz-Ozbay*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, USA
John C. Ham*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, IFAU, IRP and IZA, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
John H. Kagel*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
Erkut Y. Ozbay*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, USA
*
filizozbay@econ.umd.edu
john.ham.econ@gmail.com
kagel.4@osu.edu
ozbay@umd.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We examine the role of cognitive ability and personality traits in a gift exchange experiment. Controlling for cognitive ability and personality characteristics, men offer higher wages than women, and men and women with greater cognitive ability and greater agreeableness on the Big Five personality scale offer higher wages as well. Men provide greater effort than women do, and respond to higher wage rates with greater increases in effort. For both genders, one standard deviation increases in agreeableness and in wages generate similar increases in effort. Serious biases arise from omitting cognitive ability and pooling men and women.

Keywords

Gift exchange experimentBig five personality characteristicsSAT scores

JEL classification

J22: Time Allocation and Labor Supply J16: Economics of Gender • Non-labor Discrimination
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 21 , Issue 3: Special Issue in Honor of John Van Huyck , September 2018 , pp. 650 - 672
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Economic Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-016-9503-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

References

Anderson, J., Burks, S., De Young, C., & Rustichini, A. (2012). Toward tyhe integration of personality thoery and decision theory in explanation of economic behavior. Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Discussion paper 6750.Google Scholar
Becker, A., Thomas,D., Thomas,D., Armin,F., and Fabian,K., 2012. “The Relationship between Economic Preferences and Psychological Personality Measures,” Working Paper, University of Bonn.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benjamin, D (2015). Distributional preferences, reciprocity-like behavior, and efficiency in bilateral exchange. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 7, 70–98.Google ScholarPubMed
Ben-Ner, Avner, & Halldorsson, Freyr (2010). Trusting and trustworthiness: What are they, how to measure them and what affects them. Journal of Economic Psychology, 31, 64–79. 10.1016/j.joep.2009.10.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolton, GE, & Ockenfels, A (2000). ERC: A theory of equity, reciprocity, and competition. American Economic Review, 90, 166–193. 10.1257/aer.90.1.166CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borghans, L, Duckworth, AL, Heckman, JJ, & Weel, BT (2008). The economics and psychology of personality traits. Journal of Human Resources, 43, 972–1059.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bors, D, & Vigneaub, F (2001). The effect of practice on raven’s advanced progressive matrices. Learning and Individual Differences, 13, 291–312. 10.1016/S1041-6080(03)00015-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandts, J, & Charness, G (2004). Do labour market conditions affect gift exchange? some experimental evidence. Economic Journal, 114, 684–708. 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2004.00237.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burks, SV, Carpenter, J, Götte, L, & Rustichini, A (2009). Cognitive skills affect economic preferences, social awareness, and job attachment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 106, 7745–7750. 10.1073/pnas.0812360106CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Casari, M, Ham, JH, & Kagel, JH (2007). Selection bias, demographic effects and ability effects in common value auction experiments. American Economic Review, 97, 1278–1304. 10.1257/aer.97.4.1278CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, P, Cohen, J, Aiken, LS, & West, SG (1999). The problem of units and the circumstance for POMP. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 34, 315–346. 10.1207/S15327906MBR3403_2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, D. J. Kagel, J. H. (2016). Other-regarding preferences: A selective survey of experimental results. In Kagel, J. H. & Roth, A. E. (Eds.), Handbook of experimental economics (Vol. 2). Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Croson, R, & Gneezy, U (2009). Gender differences in preferences. Journal of Economic Literature, 47, 448–474. 10.1257/jel.47.2.448CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, D, Ivenov, A, & Korenok, O (2016). Individual characteristics and behavior in repeated games: An experimental study. Experimental Economics, 16, 67–99. 10.1007/s10683-014-9427-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dohmen, T, Falk, A, Huffman, D, & Sunde, U (2010). Are risk aversion and impatience related to cognitive ability?. American Economic Review, 100, 1238–1260. 10.1257/aer.100.3.1238CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D, A, Fudenberg, D, & Rand, DG (2014). Who cooperates in repeated prisoner dilemma games: The role of altruism, inequity aversion and demographics. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 98, 41–55. 10.1016/j.jebo.2013.12.007Google Scholar
Dufwenberg, M, & Kirchsteiger, G (2004). A theory of sequential reciprocity. Games and Economic Behavior, 47, 268–298. 10.1016/j.geb.2003.06.003CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Einav, L, Finkelstein, A, Pascu, I, & Cullen, MR (2012). How general are risk preferences? choices under uncertainty in different domains. American Economic Review, 102(6), 2606–2638. 10.1257/aer.102.6.2606CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fehr, E, & Schmidt, KM (1999). A theory of fairness, competition, and cooperation. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 817–868. 10.1162/003355399556151CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischbacher, U (2007). z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready made economic experiments. Experimental Economics, 10, 171–178. 10.1007/s10683-006-9159-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillen, B, Snowberg, E, & Yariv, L (2015). Experimenting with measurement error: Techniques with applications to the caltech cohort, California Institute of Technology: Mimeo 10.3386/w21517CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ham, JC, Kagel, J, & Lehrer, S (2005). Randomization, endogeneity and laboratory experiments: The role of cash balances in private value auctions. Journal of Econometrics, 125, 175–205. 10.1016/j.jeconom.2004.04.008CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heckman, JJ, Stixrud, J, & Urzua, S (2006). The effects of cognitive and noncognitive abilities on labor market outcomes and social behavior. Journal of Labor Economics, 24(3), 411–482. 10.1086/504455CrossRefGoogle Scholar
John, PO, Naumann, LP, Soto, JC John, OP, Robbins, RW, & Pervin, LA (2008). “Paradigm shift: To the integrative big five”. Handbook of personality, theory, and research, New York: Guilford Press 114–158.Google Scholar
Jones, Matthew T. 2012. “Strategic complexity and cooperation: An experimental study,” SSRN Working Paper. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2025659.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kagel, JH, Frechette, G, & Schotter, A (2015). “Laboratory experiments: The lab in relationship to field experiments, field data, and economic theory” in methods of modern experimental economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kagel, JH, & McGee, P (2014). Personality and cooperation in finitely repeated prisoner dilemma games. Economic Letters, 124, 274–277. 10.1016/j.econlet.2014.05.034CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kern, M, Duckworth, A, Urzua, S, Loeber, R, Loeber, M, & Lynam, D (2013). Mind your manners! aspects of agreeableness and early adult outcomes for inner-city boys, Mimeo: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Kruger, J, & Clement, RW (1994). The truly false consensus effect: An ineradicable and egocentric bias in social perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(4), 596–610. 10.1037/0022-3514.67.4.596CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurzban, R, & Houser, D (2001). Individual differences in cooperation in a circular public goods game. European Journal of Personality, 15, 37–52. 10.1002/per.420CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lacetera, N., M. Macis, and R. Slonim, 2011. “Rewarding altruism: A natural field experiment.” NBER Working Paper 17636.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellström, C, & Johannesson, M (2008). Crowding out in blood donations: Was titmuss right?. Journal of the European Economic Association, 6, 845–863. 10.1162/JEEA.2008.6.4.845CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niederle, M Kagel, JH, & Roth, AE (2016). “Gender effects in economic experiments,”. Handbook of experimental economics, Princeton: Princeton university press.Google Scholar
Pothos, EM, Perry, G, Corr, PJ, Matthew, MR, & Busemeyer, JR (2010). Understanding cooperation in the prisoner’s dilemma game. Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 210–216. 10.1016/j.paid.2010.05.002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, L, Greene, D, & House, P (1977). The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 279–301. 10.1016/0022-1031(77)90049-XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwieren, C (2012). The gender wage gap in experimental labor markets. Economics Letters, 117(3), 592–595. 10.1016/j.econlet.2012.07.021CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Urzua, S, & Veramendi, G (2012). Empirical strategies to identify the determinants and consequences of skills, Mimeo: University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Filiz-Ozbay et al. supplementary material

Online Appendix Tables
Download Filiz-Ozbay et al. supplementary material(File)
File 77.3 KB