Abstract
We here present both experimental and theoretical results for an Anticipation Game, a two-stage game wherein the standard Dictator Game is played after a matching phase wherein receivers use the past actions of dictators to decide whether to interact with them. The experimental results for three different treatments show that partner choice induces dictators to adjust their donations towards the expectations of the receivers, giving significantly more than expected in the standard Dictator Game. Adding noise to the dictators’ reputation lowers the donations, underlining that their actions are determined by the knowledge provided to receivers. Secondly, we show that the recently proposed stochastic evolutionary model where payoff only weakly drives evolution and individuals can make mistakes requires some adaptations to explain the experimental results. We observe that the model fails in reproducing the heterogeneous strategy distributions. We show here that by explicitly modelling the dictators’ probability of acceptance by receivers and introducing a parameter that reflects the dictators’ capacity to anticipate future gains produces a closer fit to the aforementioned strategy distributions. This new parameter has the important advantage that it explains where the dictators’ generosity comes from, revealing that anticipating future acceptance is the key to success.
Highlights
We go beyond this prior work by first providing experimental insights into how humans behave in a modified DG wherein prior to playing that game receivers have the possibility to decide whether they accept a given dictator, using information on the dictator’s actions in previous rounds to make that decision
The dictator, knowing that what she gives might be observable by receivers in the future, has to decide how much to give from the endowment of 10 Experimental Currency Units (ECUs) she is given at the start of every round, with the smallest donation equal to 1
The subgame perfect equilibrium in a population of rational and selfish payoff maximizing individuals playing the DG is to give the minimum amount, the average donation within the treatment 1 is close to 2.2 ECUs, which means that dictators keep on average less than 8 ECUs for themselves
Summary
We go beyond this prior work by first providing experimental insights into how humans behave in a modified DG wherein prior to playing that game receivers have the possibility to decide whether they accept a given dictator, using information on the dictator’s actions in previous rounds to make that decision. Our experiments highlight the role of reputation for the generosity of dictators since receivers will decide to accept dictators based on a variety of social cues. The receiver will need to decide whether she wishes to accept or not the given dictator using information about the past actions or reputation of her proposed dictator. The results of the noisy AG experiment will reveal the importance of having information on the dictator’s reputation for the donation levels
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
