Money, Food, and Daily Life Objects Are Similarly Shared in the Dictator Game. A Study among Poles and Tsimane'.

Piotr Sorokowski,Michalina Marczak,Anna Oleszkiewicz,Tomas Huanca,Agnieszka Sorokowska,Agnieszka Niemczyk,Esther C Velasco

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00554

Abstract

The dictator game (DG) is one of the most popular methods for measuring sharing behaviors. However, the matter of goods used in the game has rarely been examined and discussed. We conducted a study in which all participants played standard version of DG in one of the three versions – “money,” “food,” or “daily life objects” sharing. Further, we wanted to expand the generalizability of our findings by investigating whether patterns in sharing various goods are independent of culture and the level of market integration. Thus, the study was conducted among people who function daily under the conditions of low market integration (109 Tsimane’ – forager-horticulturists from Bolivian Amazon) and in a society highly integrated with the market-based economy (85 Polish people). We observed that among both Polish and Tsimane’ people the participants were equally likely to share money, food and small, daily life objects with an unknown partner, which implies that generosity might not be related with the type of possessed resources. However, regardless of the kind of goods given, Tsimane’ people were less eager to share with anonymous others than Polish people. We present several implications of our findings for studies on generosity and altruism.

Highlights

The dictator game (DG) is one of the most popular methods for measuring sharing behaviors (Engel, 2011)
In order to test the differences in generosity with different goods involved in the Polish sample we performed Kruskal–Wallis test with condition (“money,” “food,” or “daily life object”) as an independent factor and amount of money/quantity of objects given to the partner as a dependent variable
Pairwise comparisons based on Mann–Whitney U-test indicate, that the effect sizes for each pair of conditions were marginal

Summary

Introduction

The dictator game (DG) is one of the most popular methods for measuring sharing behaviors (Engel, 2011). Many variations of the DG have been developed in order to capture different types of decisions and economic strategies. Developed by Kahneman et al (1986), DG became very popular over the past 30 years, mostly because of its simplicity and accuracy in turning assumptions into measurable decisions (Engel, 2011). Based on observation of decisions made in this economic game, scientists came to the conclusion that people are more eager to share than homo economicus theory would suggest, i.e., the frequency and quantity of shared goods often exceeds the assumed, rational and self-centered social exchange (Fehr and Schmidt, 1999).

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Results

Conclusion