@misc{10481/57811,
year = {2019},
month = {7},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10481/57811},
abstract = {We present experimental data from the Heaven-Dictator Game, a generalization of the Dictator Game that investigates
the overstatement of inequality reduction in the motivation of social preferences. Two players start
with equal endowments and the Heaven-Dictator player, without incurring any pecuniary cost or profit, chooses
among increasing, decreasing or maintaining the earnings of the recipient player. Any choice except for the
status quo generates unequal payoffs. The design avoids the experimenter demand effect of the standard “give
only” version while simultaneously allowing participants to manifest antisocial preferences, inequity reduction
or retaliation cannot be called for as motives. We find that the majority (75.4%) of subjects choose to increase
their partners’ earnings; there is a non-negligible 24.6% of subjects that either choose the status quo (11.9%) or
to decrease (12.7%) others’ earnings. Based on the psychological literature on music as a mood-inducing stimulus
and on the effects of mood on helping behavior, we study the effect of exposure to different types of music
on the Heaven-Dictator choices. Although at first sight observed distributional preferences are independent of
the music condition, further analysis reveals that classical music seems to foster social welfare rather than
inequality aversion.},
organization = {Financial support by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y
Competitividad (grant ECO2015-68469-R) and the Universitat Jaume I
(grant UJI-B2018-76) is gratefully acknowledged},
publisher = {Elsevier},
keywords = {Other-regarding preferences},
keywords = {Experiment},
keywords = {Dictator game},
keywords = {Behavior},
keywords = {Music},
title = {The Heaven Dictator Game: Costless taking or giving},
doi = {10.1016/j.socec.2019.101449},
author = {García-Gallego, Aurora and Georgantzis, Nikolaos and Ruiz Martos, María J.},
}