Short- and long-run goals in ultimatum bargaining: impatience predicts spite-based behavior.

Antonio M Espín,Filippos Exadaktylos,Benedikt Herrmann,Pablo Brañas-Garza

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00214

Abstract

The ultimatum game (UG) is widely used to study human bargaining behavior and fairness norms. In this game, two players have to agree on how to split a sum of money. The proposer makes an offer, which the responder can accept or reject. If the responder rejects, neither player gets anything. The prevailing view is that, beyond self-interest, the desire to equalize both players’ payoffs (i.e., fairness) is the crucial motivation in the UG. Based on this view, previous research suggests that fairness is a short-run oriented motive that conflicts with the long-run goal of self-interest. However, competitive spite, which reflects an antisocial (not norm-based) desire to minimize others’ payoffs, can also account for the behavior observed in the UG, and has been linked to short-run, present-oriented aspirations as well. In this paper, we explore the relationship between individuals’ intertemporal preferences and their behavior in a citywide dual-role UG experiment (N = 713). We find that impatience (short-run orientation) predicts the rejection of low, “unfair” offers as responder and the proposal of low, “unfair” offers as proposer, which is consistent with spitefulness but inconsistent with fairness motivations. This behavior systematically reduces the payoffs of those who interact with impatient individuals. Thus, impatient individuals appear to be keen to minimize their partners’ share of the pie, even at the risk of destroying it. These findings indicate that competitively reducing other’s payoffs, rather than fairness (or self-interest), is the short-run goal in ultimatum bargaining.

Highlights

The ultimatum game (UG) is an economic experimental set-up widely used to study the nature of human bargaining and the enforcement of fairness norms (Güth et al, 1982; Sanfey et al, 2003; Henrich et al, 2005, 2006)
For visual clarity we categorized individuals in three groups according to their delay discounting (DD) and plot offers and minimum acceptable offer (MAO) in terms of their deviation from the mean offer (0.462 ± 0.007) and MAO (0.350 ± 0.009), defined as a fraction of the pie
The effect of DD is even clearer on the difference “offer-MAO,” a variable that serves as a measure of the margin of agreement each individual allows: the larger one’s offer and the smaller one’s MAO, the more likely the individual is to agree with others preventing the destruction of the pie

Summary

Introduction

The ultimatum game (UG) is an economic experimental set-up widely used to study the nature of human bargaining and the enforcement of fairness norms (Güth et al, 1982; Sanfey et al, 2003; Henrich et al, 2005, 2006). In this game, the first player (the proposer) proposes how to split a sum of money with the second player (the responder). The responder can either accept or reject the proposal. If the proposal is accepted, the “pie” is divided ; if rejected, neither player is paid. Assuming money-maximizing players, these patterns of behavior constitute the subgame perfect

Objectives

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Conclusion