IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_5246.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Peculiar Power of Pairs

Author

Listed:
  • Markus Sass
  • Joachim Weimann

Abstract

To examine the effect of group size on the stability of prosocial behavior we used standard one-shot public good experiments with two and four subjects, which were conducted repeatedly three times at intervals of one week. Partner and stranger treatments were employed to control for group composition effects. All the experiments were carried out without providing feedback and using a payment mechanism promoting stable behavior, which allows the referral of all observed differences in the dynamics of behavior to different group sizes. Our findings indicate that pairs are much better at establishing and stabilizing cooperation than groups of four. Unlike pairs, groups show very low contributions to the public good in the stranger treatment and a strong tendency to decrease cooperation in the partner treatment. The results in all treatments demonstrate that moral self-licensing is a stable pattern of behavior in dynamic social dilemma contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Markus Sass & Joachim Weimann, 2015. "The Peculiar Power of Pairs," CESifo Working Paper Series 5246, CESifo.
  • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_5246
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp5246.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Huck, Steffen & Normann, Hans-Theo & Oechssler, Jorg, 2004. "Two are few and four are many: number effects in experimental oligopolies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 435-446, April.
    2. Markus Sass & Florian Timme & Joachim Weimann, 2015. "The Dynamics of Dictator Behavior," CESifo Working Paper Series 5348, CESifo.
    3. Jan Potters & Sigrid Suetens, 2013. "Oligopoly Experiments In The Current Millennium," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 439-460, July.
    4. Fischbacher, Urs & Gachter, Simon & Fehr, Ernst, 2001. "Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 397-404, June.
    5. Daniele Nosenzo & Simone Quercia & Martin Sefton, 2015. "Cooperation in small groups: the effect of group size," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(1), pages 4-14, March.
    6. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gachter, 2010. "Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 541-556, March.
    7. Markus Sass & Joachim Weimann, 2015. "Moral Self-Licensing and the Direct Touch Effect," CESifo Working Paper Series 5174, CESifo.
    8. Jeanette Brosig & Thomas Riechmann & Joachim Weimann, 2007. "Selfish in the end? An investigation of consistency and stability of individual behaviour," FEMM Working Papers 07005, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    9. Ben Greiner, 2004. "The Online Recruitment System ORSEE 2.0 - A Guide for the Organization of Experiments in Economics," Working Paper Series in Economics 10, University of Cologne, Department of Economics.
    10. Ben Greiner, 2004. "The Online Recruitment System ORSEE - A Guide for the Organization of Experiments in Economics," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2003-10, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    11. R. Isaac & James Walker & Susan Thomas, 1984. "Divergent evidence on free riding: An experimental examination of possible explanations," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 113-149, January.
    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. Mekvabishvili, Rati & Mekvabishvili, Elguja & Natsvaladze, Marine & Sirbiladze, Rusudan & Mzhavanadze, Giorgi & Deisadze, Salome, 2023. "Prosocial Behavior and the Individual Normative Standard of Fairness within a Dynamic Context: Experimental Evidence," MPRA Paper 116774, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 20 Mar 2023.
    2. Timme, Florian & Sass, Markus, 2016. "Doing it once is good, doing it twice is even better. On the dynamics of altruistic behavior," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145536, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    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. Markus Sass & Florian Timme & Joachim Weimann, 2018. "Cooperation of Pairs," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-34, September.
    2. Felix Koelle, 2012. "Heterogeneity and Cooperation in Privileged Groups: The Role of Capability and Valuation on Public Goods Provision," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 03-08, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    3. Siegfried Berninghaus & Werner Güth & Stephan Schosser, 2013. "Reciprocity in Locating Contributions: Experiments on the Neighborhood Public Good Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 4(2), pages 1-19, April.
    4. Jordi Brandts & Christina Rott & Carles Solà, 2016. "Not just like starting over - Leadership and revivification of cooperation in groups," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(4), pages 792-818, December.
    5. Kölle, Felix & Gächter, Simon & Quercia, Simone, 2014. "The ABC of Cooperation in Voluntary Contribution and Common Pool Extraction Games," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100417, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Riedel, Nadine & Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah, 2013. "Asymmetric obligations," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 67-80.
    7. Glogowsky, Ulrich & Cagala, Tobias & Rincke, Johannes & Grimm, Veronika, 2014. "Cooperation and Trustworthiness in Repeated Interaction," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100437, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    8. Bernd Irlenbusch & Janna Ter Meer, 2015. "Lying in public good games with and without punishment," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 06-02, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    9. Anna Conte & M. Vittoria Levati & Natalia Montinari, 2019. "Experience in public goods experiments," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 86(1), pages 65-93, February.
    10. Markus Sass & Joachim Weimann, 2015. "Moral Self-Licensing and the Direct Touch Effect," CESifo Working Paper Series 5174, CESifo.
    11. Halbheer, Daniel & Fehr, Ernst & Goette, Lorenz & Schmutzler, Armin, 2009. "Self-reinforcing market dominance," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 481-502, November.
    12. Axel Sonntag & Daniel John Zizzo, 2015. "Institutional authority and collusion," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 82(1), pages 13-37, July.
    13. Reischmann, Andreas, 2016. "Conditional Contribution Mechanisms for the Provision of Public Goods in Dynamic Settings - Theory and Experimental Evidence," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145613, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Alt, Marius, 2024. "Better us later than me now —," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    15. Chen, Josie I, 2014. "Obedience to Rules with Mild Sanctions: The Roles of Peer Punishment and Voting," MPRA Paper 55364, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Jensen, Thomas & Markussen, Thomas, 2021. "Group size, signaling and the effect of democracy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 258-273.
    17. Carlsson, Fredrik & Johansson-Stenman, Olof & Nam, Pham Khanh, 2014. "Social preferences are stable over long periods of time," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 104-114.
    18. Normann, Hans-Theo & Rösch, Jürgen & Schultz, Luis Manuel, 2015. "Do buyer groups facilitate collusion?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 72-84.
    19. Joachim Weimann & Jeannette Brosig-Koch & Timo Heinrich & Heike Hennig-Schmidt & Claudia Keser & Christian Stahr, 2014. "An Explanation of (First Round) Contributions in Public-Good Experiments," CESifo Working Paper Series 5039, CESifo.
    20. Kamei, Kenju, 2020. "Group size effect and over-punishment in the case of third party enforcement of social norms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 395-412.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    repeated public good experiments; partner versus stranger; group size effects; moral self-licensing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ces:ceswps:_5246. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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.