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Equality over intentionality: The normative social preferences of neutral third-parties

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  • Ciril Bosch-Rosa

Abstract

This paper studies whether intentionality is more prevalent than fairness in social preferences. We do this by introducing a new three-player game in which the choices of neutral third-party arbiters are isolated from any monetary or strategic concerns. This allows us to study the normative preferences of subjects, and to compare the relative weight they give to intentions and inequality. The results show that arbiters are mainly concerned with inequality, while other’s (selfish) intentions seem to play a minor role in their preferences. This result is robust to a series of experimental designs, suggesting that the role of intentions in social preferences might be smaller than implied by the previous literature.

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  • Ciril Bosch-Rosa, 2018. "Equality over intentionality: The normative social preferences of neutral third-parties," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(11), pages 1-13, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0205240
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0205240
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Ingersoll, William Robert & Roomets, Alex, 2020. "Bargaining with a partially-incentivized agent," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 96-115.

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