Winking and Mizer (2013) on a Field Experiment with the Dictator Game

Jeffrey Winking and Nicholas Mizer, “Natural-Field Dictator Game Shows No Altruistic Giving.” Evolution and Human Behavior 34(4): 288-293, July 2013.

• Laboratory experiments tend not to be fully anonymous, and the setting might also spur pro-social behavior; in other words, the external validity of lab experiments in questionable. [Recall Levitt and List (2007).]

• The authors run the dictator game – player one receives a windfall, and if he or she chooses, can split it with player two – in a field setting, where participants do not know that they are taking part in an experiment. In laboratory versions of the dictator game, almost 2/3 of dictators (player ones) offer some money, and the average offer is about 28% of the endowment. 

• The field version involves Confederate 1 waiting at a bus stop. The (involuntary, as it were) subject comes to the stop to wait for a bus. Confederate 1 moves off a bit to take a call, turning his back on the subject. Confederate 2 walks by quickly, on the phone, seems to notice casino chips in his pockets (three $5 chips and five $1 chips). Confederate 2 tells the subject that he is late for the airport, and offers him the chips. (In a second condition, Confederate 2 mentions that the subject could split the chips with Confederate 1.) Confederate 1 eventually sidles back after Confederate 2 has left, giving the subject an opportunity to split the chips. After 30 seconds, the experimenters reveal what they are up to, everyone enjoys a hearty laugh (I made that part up), and the subject completes a questionnaire for further payment. There is yet a third condition involving folks from the same bus stops playing an acknowledged dictator game experiment using casino chips. 

• In the field experiment, no one shared any chips. In the third condition (where the experiment was explicit), most subjects shared some chips, behaving in the standard laboratory fashion. 

• One possible confounding factor: it may be that the subjects usually would share the chips, but they just weren’t that keen on Confederate 1!