Gender identification and stake size effects in the Impunity Game

In the impunity game, responders, unlike the ultimatum game, cannot affect proposer’s outcomes. Proposers in this game, like in the dictator game, have full control over their own outcome, as rejection from the responder has no effect on their payoff. Thus, the theoretical prediction of this game states that the responder should accept any offer. An experiment is designed aiming at analysing both players’ behaviour in the impunity game when subjects are aware of the gender of their partner. Additionally, we examine the effect of different stake sizes. An online experiment with eight different treatments is implemented, with a total number of 1,210 observations. The main findings are that proposers give to responders an important (around 35%) share on average, and that both the stake size and gender identification affect their decisions. Moreover, responders’ rejection patterns follow the game theoretical prediction, although the hypothesis that knowing your counterpart sex/gender affects responders’ behaviour cannot be rejected. Finally, subjects’ behaviour in this game is found to be determined by their personality and psychopathy traits, as well as by their emotional intelligence level. Other sociodemographic characteristics like place of birth or their employment status are found to also influence their decisions.