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Keeping others in our mind or in our heart? Distribution games under cognitive load

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Karen Evelyn Hauge Open the ORCID record for Karen Evelyn Hauge [Opens in a new window] ,
Kjell Arne Brekke ,
Lars-Olof Johansson ,
Olof Johansson-Stenman  and
Henrik Svedsäter
Karen Evelyn Hauge*
Affiliation:
Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research, Gaustadalléen 21, 0349 Oslo, Norway
Kjell Arne Brekke
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Oslo, Postboks 1095 Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway
Lars-Olof Johansson
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Box 500, 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden
Olof Johansson-Stenman
Affiliation:
Departement of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 640, 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden
Henrik Svedsäter
Affiliation:
Glaxo Smith Kline, Stockley Park West, Blg 10 1-3 Iron Bridge Road, Uxbridge UB11 1BT, UK
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

It has recently been argued that giving is spontaneous while greed is calculated (Rand et al., in Nature 489:427–430, 2012). If greed is calculated we would expect that cognitive load, which is assumed to reduce the influence of cognitive processes, should affect greed. In this paper we study both charitable giving and the behavior of dictators under high and low cognitive load to test if greed is affected by the load. This is tested in three different dictator game experiments. In the dictator games we use both a give frame, where the dictators are given an amount that they may share with a partner, and a take frame, where dictators may take from an amount initially allocated to the partner. The results from all three experiments show that the behavioral effect in terms of allocated money of the induced load is small if at all existent. At the same time, follow-up questions indicate that the subjects’ decisions are more impulsive and less driven by their thoughts under cognitive load.

Keywords

Dictator gameCharity gameLab experimentCognitive load
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 562 - 576
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-015-9454-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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