Texts: The Dictator Game
The strongest experimental evidence against the idea that people are only interested in what they can get for themselves comes from the dictator game.
The Rules: In the game, two people interact anonymously. One of them is randomly designated as the "dictator." It is his job to split an amount of money that is put up for that purpose by the researcher running the game. A typical amount is $10.
The defining feature of the game is that the dictator can dictate whatever split he prefers. It could be to keep all the money for himself. It could be to give all the money to the other player. It could be to split it in any other possible way, such as $8.67 for himself and $1.33 for the other person. Because the game is fully anonymous, the dictator doesn't have to worry about retaliation by the other person. He can get away with being as selfish as he wants.
a. Do people play the dictator game show only self-interested behavior?
b. How much divergence is there in the splits given by dictators to the other player?
How Players Behave
So, what actually happens when people play the dictator game? After running the experiment many thousands of times in many different countries, experimenters have found that only one-third of dictators keep all of the money for themselves. The other two-thirds show substantial generosity, allocating an average of 42 percent of the money to the other player. In addition, 17 percent of all dictators split the money perfectly evenly and a little over five percent of all dictators give the other player everything.
c. Evaluate the following statement. "We shouldn't generalize from what people do in the ultimatum game because $10 is a trivial amount of money. When larger amounts of money are on the line, people will act differently."