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)
Lund University, University of Bergen (UiB), University of Copenhagen, Norwegian School of Economics
No. of pages
16
Publication date
04-2014
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
502045 Behavioural economics
Keywords
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/fairness-is-intuitive(fb9c3801-7eb6-4e1b-b34d-128f485b661b).html