From Windfall Sharing to Property Ownership: Prosocial Personality Traits in Giving and Taking Dictator Games

Kun Zhao,Yoshihisa Kashima,Luke Smillie

doi:10.3390/g9020030

Abstract

The dictator game is a well-known task measuring prosocial preferences, in which one person divides a fixed amount of windfall money with a recipient. A key factor in real-world transfers of wealth is the concept of property ownership and consequently the related acts of giving and taking. Using a variation of the traditional dictator game (N = 256), we examined whether individual differences under different game frames corresponded with prosocial personality traits from the Big Five (politeness, compassion) and HEXACO (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience) (honesty-humility, agreeableness) models. In the Big Five model, the effects of prosocial personality traits were generally stronger and more consistent for taking than for giving, in line with a “do-no-harm” explanation, whereby prosocial individuals felt less entitled to and less willing to infringe on the endowments of others. In contrast, HEXACO honesty-humility predicted allocations across both frames, consistent with its broad association with fair-mindedness, and providing further evidence of its role in allocations of wealth more generally. These findings highlight the utility of integrating personality psychology with behavioral economics, in which the discriminant validity across prosocial traits can shed light on the distinct motivations underpinning social decisions.

Highlights

Studies of social decision making in psychology and economics typically measure other-regarding preferences through transfers of scarce resources between individuals [1]
The politeness aspect of Big Five agreeableness was strongly correlated with both honesty-humility and agreeableness from the HEXACO model
The compassion aspect of Big Five agreeableness was more strongly correlated with agreeableness than honesty-humility from the HEXACO model

Summary

Introduction

Studies of social decision making in psychology and economics typically measure other-regarding preferences through transfers of scarce resources (such as money) between individuals [1]. A key parameter in transfers of wealth that is absent in the standard dictator game is property ownership and the associated acts of giving or taking. We move beyond simple windfall sharing in the standard dictator game and examine how initial ownership and the giving-taking frame are associated with traits from major models of personality to determine prosociality. We find a different pattern of results across the two models, in which prosocial personality traits from the Big Five predicted taking (but not non-giving), pointing to a harm-aversion explanation.

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion