Fairness is intuitive

Author(s)
Alexander Wright Cappelen, Ulrik H. Nielsen, Bertil Tungodden, Jean-Robert Tyran, Erik Wengström
Abstract

In this paper we provide new evidence showing that fair behavior is intuitive to most people. We find a strong association between a short response time and fair behavior in the dictator game. This association is robust to controls that take account of the fact that response time might be affected by the decision-maker’s cognitive ability and swiftness. The experiment was conducted with a large and heterogeneous sample recruited from the general population in Denmark. We find a striking similarity in the association between response time and fair behavior across groups in the society, which suggests that the predisposition to act fairly is a general human trait.

Organisation(s)
Department of Economics, Vienna Center for Experimental Economics
External organisation(s)
Norwegian School of Economics, University of Copenhagen
Journal
Experimental Economics
Volume
19
Pages
727–740
No. of pages
14
ISSN
1386-4157
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-015-9463-y
Publication date
12-2016
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
502045 Behavioural economics, 502021 Microeconomics
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous)
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/fairness-is-intuitive(35788a43-cfb3-4c6a-98c8-69934110d282).html