IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hai/wpaper/201511.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Where Do Social Preferences Come From?

Author

Listed:
  • Chaning Jang

    (Princeton University, Department of Psychology)

  • John Lynham

    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics)

Abstract

Where do preferences for fairness come from? We use a unique field setting to test for a spillover of sharing norms from the workplace to a laboratory experiment. Fishermen working in teams receive random income shocks (catching fish) that they must regularly divide among themselves. We demonstrate a clear correlation between sharing norms in the field and sharing norms in the lab. Furthermore, the spillover effect is stronger for fishermen who have been exposed to a sharing norm for longer, suggesting that our findings are not driven by selection effects. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that work environments shape social preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Chaning Jang & John Lynham, 2015. "Where Do Social Preferences Come From?," Working Papers 201511, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hai:wpaper:201511
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economics.hawaii.edu/research/workingpapers/WP_15-11.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2015
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary Charness & Matthew Rabin, 2002. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 817-869.
    2. Uri Gneezy & Andreas Leibbrandt & John A. List, 2016. "Ode to the Sea: Workplace Organizations and Norms of Cooperation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(595), pages 1856-1883, September.
    3. Joseph Henrich, 2001. "In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 73-78, May.
    4. Jeffrey Carpenter & Stephen Burks & Lorenz Götte, 2006. "Performance Pay and the Erosion of Worker Cooperation: Field experimental evidence," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0603, Middlebury College, Department of Economics.
    5. Carpenter Jeffrey P & Seki Erika, 2005. "Competitive Work Environments and Social Preferences: Field Experimental Evidence from a Japanese Fishing Community," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 1-25, December.
    6. Uri Gneezy & Andreas Leibbrandt & John List, 2016. "THE RISE AND FALL OF COMPETITIVENESS: Experimental Evidence from Individualistic and Collectivistic Societies," Natural Field Experiments 00579, The Field Experiments Website.
    7. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2002. "Altruistic punishment in humans," Nature, Nature, vol. 415(6868), pages 137-140, January.
    8. Henrich, Joseph & Boyd, Robert & Bowles, Samuel & Camerer, Colin & Fehr, Ernst & Gintis, Herbert (ed.), 2004. "Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199262052.
    9. McConnell, Kenneth E. & Price, Michael, 2006. "The lay system in commercial fisheries: Origin and implications," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 295-307, May.
    10. Fatima Lambarraa & Gerhard Riener, 2012. "On the Norms of Charitable Giving in Islam: A Field Experiment," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 111, Courant Research Centre PEG.
    11. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2003. "The nature of human altruism," Nature, Nature, vol. 425(6960), pages 785-791, October.
    12. Joseph Henrich, 2000. "Does Culture Matter in Economic Behavior? Ultimatum Game Bargaining among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 973-979, September.
    13. Hessel Oosterbeek & Randolph Sloof & Gijs van de Kuilen, 2004. "Cultural Differences in Ultimatum Game Experiments: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 7(2), pages 171-188, June.
    14. Samuel Bowles & Robert Boyd & Colin Camerer & Ernst Fehr & Herbert Gintis & Joseph Henrich & Richard McElreath, 2001. "In search of homo economicus: Experiments in 15 small-scale societies," Artefactual Field Experiments 00068, The Field Experiments Website.
    15. Joseph Henrich, 2000. "Does culture matter in economic behavior? Ultimatum game bargaining among the machiguenga," Artefactual Field Experiments 00067, The Field Experiments Website.
    16. Lambarraa, Fatima & Riener, Gerhard, 2015. "On the norms of charitable giving in Islam: Two field experiments in Morocco," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 69-84.
    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. Florian Diekert & Tillmann Eymess & Joseph Luomba & Israel Waichman, 2022. "The Creation of Social Norms under Weak Institutions," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(6), pages 1127-1160.
    2. Lars Ivar Oppedal Berge & Kjetil Bjorvatn & Simon Galle & Edward Miguel & Daniel N. Posner & Bertil Tungodden & Kelly Zhang, 2015. "How Strong are Ethnic Preferences?," NBER Working Papers 21715, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Anna Lou Abatayo & Tongzhe Li, 2024. "Public goods and bads with vulnerable individuals: How information and social nudges change behaviour," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(2), pages 556-587, May.
    4. Drupp, Moritz A. & Khadjavi, Menusch & Quaas, Martin F., 2019. "Truth-telling and the regulator. Experimental evidence from commercial fishermen," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    5. Nourani, Vesall & Maertens, Annemie & Michelson, Hope, 2021. "Public good provision and democracy: Evidence from an experiment with farmer groups in Malawi," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    6. Drupp, Moritz A. & Khadjavi, Menusch & Quaas, Martin F., 2016. "Truth-telling and the regulator: Evidence from a field experiment with commercial fishermen," Kiel Working Papers 2063, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    7. Abatayo, Anna Lou & Lynham, John, 2020. "Risk preferences after a typhoon: An artefactual field experiment with fishers in the Philippines," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    8. Howe, E. Lance & Murphy, James J. & Gerkey, Drew & Stoddard, Olga B. & West, Colin Thor, 2023. "Sharing, social norms, and social distance: Experimental evidence from Russia and Western Alaska," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 345-358.

    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. 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.
    2. Gurven, Michael & Zanolini, Arianna & Schniter, Eric, 2008. "Culture sometimes matters: Intra-cultural variation in pro-social behavior among Tsimane Amerindians," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(3-4), pages 587-607, September.
    3. Heller, William B. & Sieberg, Katri K., 2010. "Honor among thieves: Cooperation as a strategic response to functional unpleasantness," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 351-362, September.
    4. Chuah, Swee-Hoon & Hoffmann, Robert & Jones, Martin & Williams, Geoffrey, 2009. "An economic anatomy of culture: Attitudes and behaviour in inter- and intra-national ultimatum game experiments," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 732-744, October.
    5. Murnighan, J. Keith & Wang, Long, 2016. "The social world as an experimental game," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 80-94.
    6. Liqi Zhu & Gerd Gigerenzer & Gang Huangfu, 2013. "Psychological Traces of China's Socio-Economic Reforms in the Ultimatum and Dictator Games," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-6, August.
    7. Sun-Ki Chai & Dolgorsuren Dorj & Katerina Sherstyuk, 2018. "Cultural Values and Behavior in Dictator, Ultimatum, and Trust Games: An Experimental Study," Research in Experimental Economics, in: Experimental Economics and Culture, volume 20, pages 89-166, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    8. van Damme, Eric & Binmore, Kenneth G. & Roth, Alvin E. & Samuelson, Larry & Winter, Eyal & Bolton, Gary E. & Ockenfels, Axel & Dufwenberg, Martin & Kirchsteiger, Georg & Gneezy, Uri & Kocher, Martin G, 2014. "How Werner Güth's ultimatum game shaped our understanding of social behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 292-318.
    9. Tünde Paál & Tamás Bereczkei, 2015. "Punishment as a Means of Competition: Implications for Strong Reciprocity Theory," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, March.
    10. Luis José Blas Moreno Garrido, 2015. "Relative Injustice Aversion," Working Papers. Serie AD 2015-08, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    11. Uri Gneezy & Andreas Leibbrandt & John A. List, 2016. "Ode to the Sea: Workplace Organizations and Norms of Cooperation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(595), pages 1856-1883, September.
    12. Dietrich, Stephan & Beekman, Gonne & Nillesen, Eleonora, 2018. "Market integration and pro-social behaviour in rural Liberia," MERIT Working Papers 2018-010, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    13. Brandts, Jordi & Riedl, Arno, 2020. "Market interaction and efficient cooperation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    14. Cochard, François & Le Gallo, Julie & Georgantzis, Nikolaos & Tisserand, Jean-Christian, 2021. "Social preferences across different populations: Meta-analyses on the ultimatum game and dictator game," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    15. Guerzoni, Marco & Jordan, Alexander, 2016. "“Cursed is the ground because of you”: Religion, Ethnicity, and the Adoption of Fertilizers in Rural Ethiopia," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201605, University of Turin.
    16. Glenn W. Harrison & John A. List, 2004. "Field Experiments," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1009-1055, December.
    17. Borghans, José A.M. & Borghans, Lex & ter Weel, Bas, 2005. "Is There a Link between Economic Outcomes and Genetic Evolution? Cross-Country Evidence from the Major Histocompatibility Complex," IZA Discussion Papers 1838, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Alexander Jordan & Marco Guerzoni, 2021. "“Cursed is the ground because of you”:," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 31(3), pages 853-890, July.
    19. Ginny Seung Choi & Virgil Henry Storr, 2018. "Market institutions and the evolution of culture," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 243-265, December.
    20. Juan Camilo Cardenas & Jeffrey Carpenter, 2008. "Behavioural Development Economics: Lessons from Field Labs in the Developing World," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(3), pages 311-338.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q2 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation
    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments
    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • B4 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology
    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior

    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:hai:wpaper:201511. 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: Web Technician (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuhius.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.