IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/col/000092/007270.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On blame-freeness and reciprocity: an experimental study

Author

Listed:
  • Mariana Blanco
  • Bogachan Celen
  • Andrew Schotter

Abstract

The theory of reciprocity is predicated on the assumption that people are willing to reward nice or kind acts and to punish unkind ones. This assumption raises the question as to how to define kindness. In this paper we offer a new definition of kindness that we call blame-freeness." Put most simply, blame-freeness states that in judging whether player i has been kind or unkind to player j in a socialsituation, player j would have to put himself in the strategic position of player i, while retaining his preferences, and ask if he would have acted in a manner that was worse than i did under identical circumstances. If j would have acted in a more unkind manner than i acted, then we say that j does not blame i for his behavior. If, however, j would have been nicer than i was, then we say that "j blames i" for his actions (i´s actions were blameworthy). We consider this notion a natural, intuitive and empirically relevant way to explain the motives of people engaged in reciprocal behavior. After developing the conceptual framework, we then test this concept in a laboratory experiment involving tournaments and find significant support for the theory."

Suggested Citation

  • Mariana Blanco & Bogachan Celen & Andrew Schotter, 2010. "On blame-freeness and reciprocity: an experimental study," Documentos de Trabajo 7270, Universidad del Rosario.
    • Handle: RePEc:col:000092:007270
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repository.urosario.edu.co/bitstream/handle/10336/10796/7270.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matthias Kräkel, 2008. "Emotions and the optimality of uneven tournaments," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 61-79, March.
    2. Kräkel, Matthias, 2008. "Emotions in tournaments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 204-214, July.
    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. Matthew Chao, 2018. "Intentions-Based Reciprocity to Monetary and Non-Monetary Gifts," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-18, September.
    2. Chao, Matthew & Chapman, Jonathan, 2020. "Saving face through preference signaling and obligation avoidance," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 569-581.
    3. Pierpaolo Battigalli & Martin Dufwenberg & Alec Smith, 2015. "Frustration and Anger in Games," CESifo Working Paper Series 5258, CESifo.

    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. Graff, Frederik & Grund, Christian & Harbring, Christine, 2021. "Competing on the Holodeck - The effect of virtual peers and heterogeneity in dynamic tournaments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    2. Joaquin Gómez-Miñambres & Eric Schniter, 2017. "Emotions and Behavior Regulation in Decision Dilemmas," Games, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-25, May.
    3. Florian Baumann & Tim Friehe, 2012. "Emotions in litigation contests," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 195-215, September.
    4. Michael Babington & Sebastian J. Goerg & Carl Kitchens, 2020. "Do Tournaments With Superstars Encourage or Discourage Competition?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(1), pages 44-63, January.
    5. Hammermann, Andrea & Mohnen, Alwine, 2014. "The pric(z)e of hard work," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 1-15.
    6. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    7. Filippin, Antonio & Gioia, Francesca, 2018. "Competition and subsequent risk-taking behaviour: Heterogeneity across gender and outcomes," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 84-94.
    8. Steffen Altmann & Armin Falk & Matthias Wibral, 2012. "Promotions and Incentives: The Case of Multistage Elimination Tournaments," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(1), pages 149-174.
    9. Verbeke, Willem & Bagozzi, Richard P. & Belschak, Frank D., 2016. "The role of status and leadership style in sales contests: A natural field experiment," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 4112-4120.
    10. Galeotti, Fabio, 2015. "Do negative emotions explain punishment in power-to-take game experiments?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 1-14.
    11. Fehr, Dietmar & Schmid, Julia, 2011. "Exclusion in the all-pay auction: An experimental investigation," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2011-009, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    12. Fischer, Mira & Wagner, Valentin, 2018. "Effects of Timing and Reference Frame of Feedback: Evidence from a Field Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 11970, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Nicolas Eber, 2011. "Fair play in contests," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 103(3), pages 253-270, July.
    14. Fischer, Mira & Wagner, Valentin, 2019. "Effects of Timing and Reference Frame of Feedback," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 150, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    15. Dietmar Grichnik & Alexander Smeja & Isabell Welpe, 2010. "The Importance of Being Emotional: How do Emotions Affect Entrepreneurial Opportunity Evaluation and Exploitation?," Post-Print hal-00856603, HAL.
    16. Yang, Fanzheng, 2013. "Using laboratory experiments to study otherwise unobservable labor market interactions," ISU General Staff Papers 201301010800004100, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    17. Ying Yang & Niladri Syam & James Hess, 2013. "Thrill of victory and agony of defeat: Emotional rewards and sales force compensation," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 379-402, December.
    18. Hoffmann, Magnus & Kolmar, Martin, 2017. "Distributional preferences in probabilistic and share contests," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 120-139.
    19. Carpenter, Jeffrey & Matthews, Peter Hans & Tabb, Benjamin, 2016. "Progressive taxation in a tournament economy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 64-72.
    20. Delfgaauw, Josse & Dur, Robert & Non, Arjan & Verbeke, Willem, 2014. "Dynamic incentive effects of relative performance pay: A field experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 1-13.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Altruism; blame; reciprocity.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:col:000092:007270. 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: Facultad de Economía (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ferosco.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.