Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The external validity of giving in the dictator game

A field experiment using the misdirected letter technique

  • Published:
Experimental Economics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We investigate the external validity of giving in the dictator game by using the misdirected letter technique in a within-subject design. First, subjects participated in standard dictator games (double blind) conducted in labs in two different studies. Second, after four to five weeks (study 1) or two years (study 2), we delivered prepared letters to the same subjects. The envelopes and the contents of the letters were designed to create the impression that they were misdirected by the mail delivery service. The letters contained 10 Euros (20 Swiss Francs in study 2) corresponding to the endowment of the in-lab experiments. We observe in both studies that subjects who showed other-regarding behavior in the lab returned the misdirected letters more often than subjects giving nothing, suggesting that in-lab behavior is related to behavior in the field.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Generally, studies dealing with field experiments are still rare. Card et al. (2011) counted studies reporting the results of field experiments that were published in one of the top five economic journals (AER, ECON, JPE, QJE or RES) during the last 35 years (1975 to 2010). They found 84 studies overall, most of them (particular until 2005) in the field of labor economics. Only eight (starting with a study by Frey and Meier 2004) are dealing with other-regarding preferences or cooperation.

  2. Letters to a “Sex Research Project” have been opened more frequently than letters to an “Education Research Project” (Sechrest and Belew 1983).

  3. The addresses were scattered throughout the urban area of Cologne (Germany).

  4. These stamps cannot be received on request. Rather we got hold of officially stamped envelopes by asking a colleague from a neighboring city (Bonn) to mail us unsealed envelopes a day before the experiment. We were able to reuse these envelopes for the experiment. The sender address of the misdirected letter came from the same city the official stamp came from (Bonn) so that letters looked consistent and real. The fact that the sender address and the stamp come from a different city than subjects’ place of residence was done purposely to avoid that subjects could carry letters in person to the sender’s address and to dilute any suspicion that the University of Cologne was involved.

  5. From the 249 subjects 29 % kept everything and the average given to others is 2.94 Euro. The distributions do not differ according to a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test as well as to a standard t-test.

  6. See Appendix for a table with descriptive statistics of the variables.

  7. In Cologne the letter was only delivered to subjects living in single households. In the Bern study 16 of all 75 participants lived in single households.

  8. Field settings will probably always differ in some aspect from in-lab experiments, which limits the expected correlations (see Camerer 2011).

  9. See also Blanco et al. (2011) who find inconsistencies of subjects’ behavior in different games.

References

  • Andreoni, J., & Bernheim, B. D. (2009). Social image and the 50–50 norm: a theoretical and experimental analysis of audience effects. Econometrica, 77(5), 1607–1636.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Andreoni, J., Justin, M. R., & Trachtmann, H. (2011). Avoiding the ask: a field experiment on altruism, empathy, and charitable giving. Nber Working Paper Series (Working Paper 17648).

  • Baran, N., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2009). Can we infer social preferences from the lab? Evidence from the trust game. NBER Working Paper Series (Working Paper 15654).

  • Bardsley, N. (2008). Dictator game giving: altruism or artefact? Experimental Economics, 11(2), 122–133.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barr, A., & Zeitlin, A. (2010). Dictator games in the lab and in nature: external validity tested and investigated in Ugandan primary schools. CSAE Working Paper.

  • Benz, M., & Meier, S. (2008). Do people behave in experiments as in the field?—Evidence from donations. Experimental Economics, 11(3), 268–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blanco, M., Engelmann, D., & Normann, H. T. (2011). A within-subject analysis of other-regarding preferences. Games and Economic Behavior, 72(3), 321–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bridges, F. S., Thompson, P. C., & Coady, N. P. (2001). Homeless affiliation, location, and sender address in return of lost letters. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, 10(3), 235–242.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Camerer, C. F. (2003). Behavioral game theory: experiments in strategic interaction. New York: University Presses CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Camerer, C. F. (2011). The promise and success of lab-field generalizability in experimental economics: a critical reply to Levitt and List. SSRN Working Paper.

  • Card, D., DellaVigna, S., & Malmendier, U. (2011). The role of theory in field experiments. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25(3), 39–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter, J., & Meyers, C. K. (2010). Why volunteer? Evidence on the role of altruism, image, and incentives. Journal of Public Economics, 94, 911–920.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cherry, T. L., Frykblom, P., & Shogren, J. F. (2002). Hardnose the dictator. The American Economic Review, 92(4), 1218–1221.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crowne, D. P., & Marlowe, D. (1960). A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 24(4), 349–354.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dana, J., Weber, R. A., & Kuang, J. X. (2007). Exploiting moral wiggle room: experiments demonstrating an illusory preference for fairness. Economic Theory, 33(1), 67–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Engel, C. (2011). Dictator games: A meta study. Experimental Economics, 14(4), 583–610.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Englmaier, F., & Gebhardt, G. (2010). Free riding in the lab and in the field. Governance and the efficiency of social systems (GESY), CESifo Working Paper No. 344.

  • Fehr, E., & Leibbrandt, A. (2008). Cooperativeness and impatience in the tragedy of the commons. Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich Working Paper No. 378.

  • Franzen, A., & Pointner, S. (2012). Anonymity in the dictator game revisited. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 81(1), 74–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frey, B. S., & Meier, S. (2004). Pro-social behavior in a natural setting. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organisation, 54(1), 65–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gurven, M., & Winking, J. (2008). Collective action in action: prosocial behavior in and out of the laboratory. American Anthropologist, 110(2), 179–190.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harrison, G. W., & List, J. A. (2004). Field experiments. Journal of Economic Literature, 43(4), 1009–1055.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman, E., McCabe, K., & Smith, V. (1996). Social distance and other-regarding behavior in dictator games. The American Economic Review, 86(3), 653–660.

    Google Scholar 

  • Howitt, D., & McCabe, J. (1978). Attitudes do predict behaviour—in mails at least. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 17(3), 285–286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Howitt, D., Craven, G., Iveson, C., Kremer, J., McCabe, J., & Rolph, T. (1977). The misdirected letter. The British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 16, 285–286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Karlan, D. S. (2005). Using experimental economics to measure social capital and predict financial decisions. The American Economic Review, 95(5), 1688–1699.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kremer, J., Barry, R., & McNally, A. (1986). The misdirected letter and the quasi-questionnaire: unobtrusive measures of prejudice in Northern Ireland. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 16(4), 303–309.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levitt, S. D., & List, J. A. (2007). What do laboratory experiments measuring social preferences reveal about the real world? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(2), 153–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levitt, S. D., & List, J. A. (2009). Field experiments in economics: the past, the present, and the future. European Economic Review, 53(1), 1–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • List, J. A. (2007). On the interpretation of giving in dictator games. Journal of Political Economy, 115(3), 482–493.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • List, J. A. (2011). Why economists should conduct field experiments and 14 tips for pulling one off. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25(3), 3–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Merritt, C. B., & Fowler, R. G. (1948). The pecuniary honesty of the public at large. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 43(1), 90–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Milgram, S. (1969). The lost letter technique. Psychology Today, 3(1), 30–33, 66–68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Milgram, S., Mann, L., & Harter, S. (1965). The lost letter-technique: a tool of social research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 29(3), 437–438.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sechrest, L., & Belew, J. (1983). Nonreactive measures of social attitudes. In L. Bickman (Ed.), Applied social psychology annual (Vol. 4, pp. 23–64). Beverly Hills: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stoop, J. (2012). From the lab to the field: envelopes, dictators and manners. Munich Personal RePEc Archive, MPRA Paper No. 37048.

  • Wilson, D. S., O’Brien, D. T., & Sesma, A. (2009). Human prosociality from an evolutionary perspective: variation and correlations at a city-wide scale. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30(3), 190–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Institute of Sociology, University of Bern, Lerchenweg 36, 3012, Bern, Switzerland

    Axel Franzen & Sonja Pointner

Authors
  1. Axel Franzen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Sonja Pointner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Axel Franzen.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

(PDF 272 kB)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Franzen, A., Pointner, S. The external validity of giving in the dictator game. Exp Econ 16, 155–169 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-012-9337-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-012-9337-5

Keywords

JEL Classification

Search

Navigation