IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ran/wpaper/wr-952.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Personality, Affects, and Forgiving Behavior in Games

Author

Listed:
  • Jui-Chung Allen Li
  • Yeh-Chen Chen

Abstract

This study asks two research questions: who forgives, and how? Prior studies have shown that more agreeable and less neurotic people have a higher tendency to forgive others, but this study argues that these associations may be spurious because these studies measure forgiveness as a disposition using self-reported questionnaires. This study shows how to combine two economic games to construct a behavioral measure of forgiveness. In the first game, the participants are unfairly mistreated; in the second game, it gives the participants an opportunity to either reciprocate the injustice, or to forgive. Based on a sample of 468 students in Grades 5, 7, and 11, the results show that agreeableness, but not neuroticism (nor extraversion, conscientiousness, openness), predicts forgiving behavior in games. While it is widely believed that forgiveness has an emotional component, affects only mediate the justice evaluation of an offer in the first game. Thus, it concludes that whether a participant forgives or not in the second game involves a cognitive decision.

Suggested Citation

  • Jui-Chung Allen Li & Yeh-Chen Chen, 2012. "Personality, Affects, and Forgiving Behavior in Games," Working Papers WR-952, RAND Corporation.
    • Handle: RePEc:ran:wpaper:wr-952
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/2012/RAND_WR952.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Axelrod, 1980. "Effective Choice in the Prisoner's Dilemma," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 24(1), pages 3-25, March.
    2. Robert Axelrod, 1980. "More Effective Choice in the Prisoner's Dilemma," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 24(3), pages 379-403, September.
    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. Ravi Bapna & Liangfei Qiu & Sarah Rice, 2014. "Repeated Interactions vs. Social Ties: Quantifying the Economic Value of Trust, Forgiveness, and Reputation Using a Field Experiment," Working Papers 14-07, NET Institute.

    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. Romero, Julian & Rosokha, Yaroslav, 2018. "Constructing strategies in the indefinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma game," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 185-219.
    2. Peter Duersch & Jörg Oechssler & Burkhard Schipper, 2014. "When is tit-for-tat unbeatable?," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 43(1), pages 25-36, February.
    3. Tarik Tazdaït & Alejandro Caparros & Jean-Chrsitophe Péreau, 2008. "Mutual Aid: An Indirect Evolution Analysis," Working Papers halshs-00275386, HAL.
    4. Jager, Wander & Janssen, Marco A., 2001. "Diffusion processes in demographic transitions: a prospect on using multi agent simulation to explore the role of cognitive strategies and social interactions," Research Report 01B40, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
    5. Oliveira, Fernando S. & Costa, Manuel L.G., 2018. "Capacity expansion under uncertainty in an oligopoly using indirect reinforcement-learning," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 267(3), pages 1039-1050.
    6. Pedro Ribeiro de Andrade & Antonio Miguel Vieira Monteiro & Gilberto Câmara & Sandra Sandri, 2009. "Games on Cellular Spaces: How Mobility Affects Equilibrium," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 12(1), pages 1-5.
    7. Jager, W. & Janssen, M. A. & De Vries, H. J. M. & De Greef, J. & Vlek, C. A. J., 2000. "Behaviour in commons dilemmas: Homo economicus and Homo psychologicus in an ecological-economic model," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 357-379, December.
    8. Zhang, Huanren, 2018. "Errors can increase cooperation in finite populations," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 203-219.
    9. Travers, Henry & Clements, Tom & Keane, Aidan & Milner-Gulland, E.J., 2011. "Incentives for cooperation: The effects of institutional controls on common pool resource extraction in Cambodia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 151-161.
    10. Alejandro Lee-Penagos, 2016. "Learning to Coordinate: Co-Evolution and Correlated Equilibrium," Discussion Papers 2016-11, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    11. Etro, Federico, 2017. "Research in economics and game theory. A 70th anniversary," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 1-7.
    12. Todd Guilfoos & Andreas Pape, 2016. "Predicting human cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma using case-based decision theory," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 80(1), pages 1-32, January.
    13. Schimit, P.H.T., 2016. "Evolutionary aspects of spatial Prisoner’s Dilemma in a population modeled by continuous probabilistic cellular automata and genetic algorithm," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 290(C), pages 178-188.
    14. 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.
    15. repec:dgr:rugsom:01b40 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Rudolf Vetschera & D. Marc Kilgour, 2013. "Strategic Behavior in Contested-Pile Methods for Fair Division of Indivisible Items," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 299-319, March.
    17. Menezes, Flavio Marques, 1992. "Repeated Games Played by Finite Automata: A Survey," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 12(1), April.
    18. Lucas Kruitwagen & Kaveh Madani & Ben Caldecott & Mark H. W. Workman, 2017. "Game theory and corporate governance: conditions for effective stewardship of companies exposed to climate change risks," Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 14-36, January.
    19. Dridi, Slimane & Lehmann, Laurent, 2014. "On learning dynamics underlying the evolution of learning rules," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 20-36.
    20. Lawrence C. Reardon, 2011. "Ideational Learning and the Paradox of Chinese Catholic Reconciliation," Journal of Current Chinese Affairs - China aktuell, Institute of Asian Studies, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, vol. 40(2), pages 43-70.
    21. Monterosso, John & Ainslie, George & Pamela Toppi Mullen, P. A. -C. & Gault, Barbara, 2002. "The fragility of cooperation: A false feedback study of a sequential iterated prisoner's dilemma," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 437-448, August.

    More about this item

    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:ran:wpaper:wr-952. 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: Benson Wong (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lpranus.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.