Abstract
Despite the wealth of studies investigating factors affecting decisions, not much is known about the impact of stereotypical beliefs on strategic economic decision-making. In the present study, we used the ultimatum game paradigm to investigate how participants playing as proposer modulate their strategic economic behavior, according to their game counterparts’ stereotypical identity (i.e., responders). The latter were introduced to the participants using occupational role nouns stereotypically marked with gender paired with feminine or masculine proper names (e.g., linguist-Anna; economist-David; economist-Cristina; linguist-Leonardo). When playing with male-stereotyped responders, proposers quickly applied the equity rule, behaving fairly, while they adopted a strategic behavior with responders characterized by female stereotypes. They were also longer to make their offers to female than to male responders but both kinds of responders received comparable offers, suggesting a greater cognitive effort to treat females as equally as males. The present study explicitly demonstrates that gender stereotypical information affect strategic economic decision-making and highlights a possible evolution of gender discrimination into a more insidious discrimination toward individuals with female characteristics.
Highlights
The Proposer Playing the Ultimatum Game: Between Social Preference and StrategyOne topic of major interest in economic decision-making studies is the strategic behavior adopted by individuals faced with economic decisions (Camerer, 2003)
We examined whether the scores at the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) questionnaires predicted the differences in mean offer and response time observed for the different responders
The present study continues the long list of works investigating the impact of social information on economic decision-making
Summary
The Proposer Playing the Ultimatum Game: Between Social Preference and StrategyOne topic of major interest in economic decision-making studies is the strategic behavior adopted by individuals faced with economic decisions (Camerer, 2003). The Proposer Playing the Ultimatum Game: Between Social Preference and Strategy. The interest in how social and emotional information affects economic decision-making has steadily grown over past decades (for overviews see Frith and Singer, 2008; Rilling and Sanfey, 2011). The ultimatum game has provided, for many years, a fruitful paradigm for assessing the social aspects of economic decision-making (Güth et al, 1982). In the standard version of this two-player game, a proposer offers to split a fixed amount of money (e.g., 10€) with a responder. Both receive their shares only if the responder accepts the offer.
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