Big experimenter is watching you! Anonymity and prosocial behavior in the laboratory

Social preference research has received considerable attention in recent years. Researchers have demonstrated that the presence of people with other-regarding preferences can have important implications in many economic dimensions. However, it is important to be aware of the fact that the empirical basis of this literature relies to a large extent on experiments that do not provide anonymity between experimenter and subject. It has been argued that this lack of experimenter-subject anonymity may create selsh incentives to engage in seemingly other-regarding behavior. If this were the case these experiments would overestimate the importance of social preferences. Previous studies provide mixed results and methodological dierences within and across studies make it difcult to isolate the impact of experimenter-subject anonymity on prosocial behavior. In this paper we use a novel procedure that allows us to examine the impact of the exact same ceteris-paribus variation in anonymity on behavior in three of the most commonly used games in the social preference literature. Our data reveals that introducing experimenter-subject anonymity has only minor, insignicant, eects on prosocial behavior.Scrutiny, anonymity, laboratory experiments, prosocial behavior

Big Experimenter Is Watching You! Anonymity and Prosocial Behavior in the Laboratory

Social preference research has received considerable attention in recent years. Researchers have demonstrated that the presence of people with social preferences has important implications in many economic domains. However, it is important to be aware of the fact that the empirical basis of this literature relies to a large extent on experiments that do not provide anonymity between experimenter and subject. It has been argued that this lack of experimenter-subject anonymity may create selfish incentives to engage in seemingly other-regarding behavior. If this were the case these experiments would overestimate the importance of social preferences. Previous studies provide mixed results and methodological differences within and across studies make it difficult to isolate the impact of experimenter-subject anonymity on prosocial behavior. In this paper we use a novel procedure that allows us to examine the impact of the exact same ceteris-paribus variation in anonymity on behavior in three of the most commonly used games in the social preference literature. Our data does not support the hypothesis that introducing experimenter-subject anonymity affects observed prosocial behavior. We do not observe significant effects of experimenter-subject anonymity on prosocial behavior in any of our games.scrutiny, prosocial behavior, anonymity, laboratory experiments

Big experimenter is watching you! Anonymity and prosocial behavior in the laboratory

Social preference research has received considerable attention in recent years. Researchers have demonstrated that the presence of people with other-regarding preferences can have important implications in many economic dimensions. However, it is important to be aware of the fact that the empirical basis of this literature relies to a large extent on experiments that do not provide anonymity between experimenter and subject. It has been argued that this lack of experimenter-subject anonymity may create selfish incentives to engage in seemingly other-regarding behavior. If this were the case these experiments would overestimate the importance of social preferences. Previous studies provide mixed results and methodological differences within and across studies make it dificult to isolate the impact of experimenter-subject anonymity on prosocial behavior. In this paper we use a novel procedure that allows us to examine the impact of the exact same ceteris-paribus variation in anonymity on behavior in three of the most commonly used games in the social preference literature. Our data reveals that introducing experimenter-subject anonymity has only minor, insignificant, effects on prosocial behavior

Big experimenter is watching you! Anonymity and prosocial behavior in the laboratory

Researchers have demonstrated that the presence of people with social preferences has importanteconomic implications. However, the empirical basis of this research relies to a large extent onexperiments that do not provide anonymity between experimenter and subject. It has been arguedthat this lack of experimenter–subject anonymity may create selfish incentives to engage inseemingly other-regarding behavior. If this were the case, these experiments would overestimatethe importance of social preferences. Previous studies provide mixed results and methodologicaldifferences within and across studies make it difficult to isolate the impact of experimenter–subjectanonymity. In this paper we use a novel procedure that allows us to examine the impact of theexact same ceterisparibus variation in anonymity on behavior in three of the most commonly usedgames in the social preference literature. We find that the introduction of experimenter–subjectanonymity has no significant effect in any of the three games