Measuring Social Norms and Preferences Using Experimental Games: A Guide for Social Scientists
- Creators
- Camerer, Colin F.
- Fehr, Ernst
- Other:
- Henrich, Joseph Patrick
Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to describe a menu of experimental games that are useful for measuring aspects of social norms and social preferences. Economists use the term 'preferences' to refer to the choices people make, and particularly to tradeoffs between different collections ('bundles') of things they value-food, money, time, prestige, and so forth. 'Social preferences' refer to how people rank different allocations of material payoffs to themselves and others. We use the term 'self-interested' to refer to people who do not care about the outcomes of others. While self-interest can be a useful working assumption, experimental research of the 1980s and 1990s have shown that a substantial fraction of people in developed countries (typically college students) also care about the payoffs of others. In some situations, many people are willing to spend resources to reduce the payoff of others. In other situations, the same people spend resources to increase the payoff of others.
Additional Information
This paper was prepared for the MacArthur Foundation Anthropology project meeting. This research was supported by NSF SBR9730364. Thanks to Sam Bowles and Joe Henrich for comments, and Natalie Smith for sharing figures from her paper. Ernst Fehr acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (project number 1214-05100.97), the Network on the Evolution of Preferences and Social Norms of the MacArthur Foundation, and the EU-TMR Research Network ENDEAR (FMRX-CTP98-0238).Attached Files
Published - 334087.pdf
Accepted Version - ssrn-id299143_1_.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 99409
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20191023-114551370
- SBR-9730364
- NSF
- 1214-05100.97
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- Network on the Evolution of Preferences
- Social Norms of the MacArthur Foundation
- FMRX-CTP98-0238
- EU-TMR Research Network ENDEAR
- Preferences Network
- SES-0078911
- NSF
- Created
-
2019-10-23Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2019-10-23Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Other Numbering System Name
- Working paper (Institute for Empirical Research in Economics)
- Other Numbering System Identifier
- 97