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Revisiting a Remedy Against Chains of Unkindness

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  • Schnedler, Wendelin
  • Stephan, Nina

Abstract

Previous experiments observe a chain of unkindness: unkindly treated people treat an innocent third party unkindly. As a remedy, it has been proposed that the unkindly treated person engages in emotional regulation by writing a letter to the unkind person. Indeed, subjects who received little money were willing to leave more to a third person when they were writing a letter rather than waiting. Here, we examine whether emotional regulation is indeed behind this observation. In line with emotional regulation, we find that letter writing also leads to more giving if the person is treated unkindly by being assigned to a frustrating rather than a pleasant job. Being able to write, however, does not affect self-reported happiness differently from having to wait. Even more strikingly, subjects assigned to pleasant jobs also give more when writing rather than waiting. This is not consistent with emotional regulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Schnedler, Wendelin & Stephan, Nina, 2020. "Revisiting a Remedy Against Chains of Unkindness," EconStor Preprints 215708, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:esprep:215708
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    1. Schnedler, Wendelin, 2022. "The broken chain: evidence against emotionally driven upstream indirect reciprocity," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 136, pages 542-558.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    experimental economics; chain of unkindness; emotional closure; cooling down;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

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