Extensive research in economics explores generosity in monetary allocations, while generosity in non-laboratory contexts often involves the allocation of consumption goods or non-monetary harm. Psychological evidence suggests that generosity may be higher in such contexts. We compare generosity...

Experiments show that people give money away to other people, even when contributions are anonymous. These findings contradict the common economic assumption that people maximize their own payoffs. Here we take the approach that human altruism is shaped by a set of cognitive models for distinct...

We explore the extent to which altruism, as measured by giving in a dictator game (DG), accounts for play in a noisy version of the repeated prisoner's dilemma. We find that DG giving is correlated with cooperation in the repeated game when no cooperative equilibria exist, but not when...

Giving in the dictator game has often been interpreted as evidence of other-regarding preferences. We suspect that giving is determined by subjects’ attempts to appear fair in the eyes of recipients and the experimenter. Therefore, we investigate behavior in the dictator game by using the...

In our experiment, a dictator game variant, the reported outcome of a die roll determines the endowment (low/high) in a subsequent dictator game. In one treatment the experimenter is present and no cheating is possible, while in another subjects can enter the result of the roll themselves. Moral...

This paper studies whether people can avoid punishment by remaining willfully ignorant about possible negative consequences of their actions for others. We employ a laboratory experiment, using modified dictator games, in which a dictator can remain willfully ignorant about the payoff...

We show that subjects who set their minimum acceptable offer to zero in an ultimatum game are the most generous players in a dictator game. This finding challenges the interpretation of the acceptance of low offers as payoff-maximizing behavior.

We study dictator allocations using a 2×2 experimental design that varies the level of anonymity and the choice set, allowing observation of audience effects in both give and take frames. Changes in the distribution of responses across treatment cells allow us to distinguish among alternative...