IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v71y2009i2p575-578.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Return of the lost letter: Experimental framing does not enhance altruism in an everyday context

Author

Listed:
  • Fessler, Daniel M.T.

Abstract

Debate surrounds interpretation of prosocial behavior in experimental games. Skeptics of the thesis that evolution produced a propensity for noncontingent altruism speculate that such results reflect the presence of information suggesting reputational consequences, including awareness that one is participating in an experiment. To examine the effects on prosocial behavior of awareness that research is being conducted, return rates were measured on 'lost' envelopes, some of which carried the message that they were dropped as part of an investigation. Return rates were not enhanced by such messages, indicating that awareness that one is in an experiment does not increase prosocial behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Fessler, Daniel M.T., 2009. "Return of the lost letter: Experimental framing does not enhance altruism in an everyday context," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 575-578, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:71:y:2009:i:2:p:575-578
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-2681(09)00075-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2007. "What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 153-174, Spring.
    2. Nicholas Bardsley, 2008. "Dictator game giving: altruism or artefact?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 11(2), pages 122-133, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brosnan, Sarah F., 2011. "An evolutionary perspective on morality," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 23-30, January.
    2. Jeffrey Winking, 2014. "Anonymity versus Privacy in the Dictator Game: Revealing Donor Decisions to Recipients Does Not Substantially Impact Donor Behavior," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(12), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Daniel Nettle & Agathe Colléony & Maria Cockerill, 2011. "Variation in Cooperative Behaviour within a Single City," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(10), pages 1-8, October.
    4. Gweneth Leigh & Andrew Leigh, 2018. "The Misaddressed Letter Experiment," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(21), pages 1527-1530, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Emin Karagözoğlu & Elif Tosun, 2022. "Endogenous Game Choice and Giving Behavior in Distribution Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-32, November.
    2. Erin L. Krupka & Roberto A. Weber, 2013. "Identifying Social Norms Using Coordination Games: Why Does Dictator Game Sharing Vary?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 495-524, June.
    3. John A. List, 2007. "On the Interpretation of Giving in Dictator Games," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(3), pages 482-493.
    4. David Bjerk, 2016. "In front of and behind the veil of ignorance: an analysis of motivations for redistribution," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(4), pages 791-824, December.
    5. Ortiz-Riomalo, Juan Felipe & Koessler, Ann-Kathrin & Engel, Stefanie, 2021. "Inducing perspective-taking for prosocial behaviour in natural resource management," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    6. Andreas Bergh & Philipp Christoph Wichardt, 2018. "Mine, Ours or Yours? Unintended Framing Effects in Dictator Games," CESifo Working Paper Series 7049, CESifo.
    7. Wang, Xinghua & Navarro-Martinez, Daniel, 2023. "Increasing the external validity of social preference games by reducing measurement error," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 261-285.
    8. Pamela Jakiela, 2013. "Equity vs. efficiency vs. self-interest: on the use of dictator games to measure distributional preferences," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(2), pages 208-221, June.
    9. Lotz, Sebastian & Schlösser, Thomas & Cain, Daylian M. & Fetchenhauer, Detlef, 2013. "The (in)stability of social preferences: Using justice sensitivity to predict when altruism collapses," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 141-148.
    10. Capraro, Valerio & Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael & Ruiz-Martos, Maria J., 2020. "Preferences for efficiency, rather than preferences for morality, drive cooperation in the one-shot Stag-Hunt game," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    11. Simon Halliday, 2011. "Rarer Actions: Giving and Taking in Third-Party Punishment Games," Working Papers 211, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    12. Agnès Festré, 2019. "On the Nature of Fair Behaviour: Further Evidence," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 193-207, December.
    13. Matteo M. Galizzi & Daniel Navarro-Martinez, 2019. "On the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 976-1002, March.
    14. Kim Lehrer & Catherine Porter, 2018. "Charitable Dictators? Determinants of Giving to NGOs in Uganda," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 80-101, January.
    15. Hedegaard, Morten & Kerschbamer, Rudolf & Müller, Daniel & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2021. "Distributional preferences explain individual behavior across games and time," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 231-255.
    16. Dörschner, T. & Musshoff, O., 2015. "How do incentive-based environmental policies affect environment protection initiatives of farmers? An experimental economic analysis using the example of species richness," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 90-103.
    17. Dorian Jullien, 2018. "Under Risk, Over Time, Regarding Other People: Language and Rationality within Three Dimensions," Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, in: Including a Symposium on Latin American Monetary Thought: Two Centuries in Search of Originality, volume 36, pages 119-155, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    18. Boschini, Anne & Muren, Astri & Persson, Mats, 2012. "Constructing gender differences in the economics lab," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(3), pages 741-752.
    19. Manja Gärtner & Anna Sandberg, 2017. "Is there an omission effect in prosocial behavior? A laboratory experiment on passive vs. active generosity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(3), pages 1-21, March.
    20. Christoph Engel, 2011. "Dictator games: a meta study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(4), pages 583-610, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:71:y:2009:i:2:p:575-578. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.