Will Joe the Plumber envy Bill Gates? The impact of both absolute and relative differences on interdependent preferences

We investigate experimentally the impact of unflattering social comparisons on individuals’ behaviour. More precisely, we examine the relationship between the satisfaction subjects derive from social comparisons and subjects’ decisions to reduce others’ income. In our experiment, subjects are randomly paired and receive an endowment. Then subjects have to report their satisfaction level after being informed of their own endowment and of their opponent’s endowment. Then they can choose, or not, to reduce their opponent’s endowment incurring a personal cost. We observe: (1) most people report their satisfaction to be negatively affected by learning others’ endowments; (2) destructive decisions are predominantly undertaken by dissatisfied subjects; (3) satisfaction is negatively affected by absolute difference (difference between subjects’ endowments measured in absolute terms) and (4) relative difference between subjects’ endowments modulates subjects’ negative behaviour.

Damaging the perfect image of athletes: How sport promotes envy

We explore the behavioural and affective differences between subjects practicing sport activities and subjects not practicing sport. Are athletes more distressed by unfavourable social comparisons and more prone to engage in hostile behaviour than non-athletes? Using experimental methods, we investigate the connection between sport practice and antisocial behaviour. In our experiment we capture the satisfaction subjects derive from unflattering social comparisons by asking them to evaluate their satisfaction after being informed of their own endowment and after being informed of their opponent’s endowment. Then subjects can decide to reduce their opponent’s endowment by incurring a cost. We observe that sport plays a key role on both individual well-being and behaviour: 1) sport practice amplifies the negative impact of unfavourable social comparisons on individual well-being and 2) sport practice exerts subjects to reduce others’ income. Besides the satisfaction sporty subjects report from social comparisons predicts their decisions to reduce others’ income. Finally we provide empirical evidences suggesting that envy affects significantly athletes’ satisfaction and behaviour.

Sketching Envy from Philosophy to Psychology

What is envy and how can we define it so as to incorporate the emotion in economic models? Through referring on philosophical and psychological researches, this paper aims at deriving a stable and concise definition of the emotion of envy. Philosophy allows us to define the elements that form envy and to disentangle the latter from other emotions. Researches on psychology help us in understanding the affective and behavioural responses of the emotion. We conclude that envy arises from any unflattering social comparison that threatens individual self-evaluation and includes a depressive and a hostile dimension. We also discuss whether the behaviour induced by envy results in destructive or in emulative actions. We will disentangle the elements that might explain why envy does not always exert the subject to adopt a hostile attitude toward the envied.

Envy in Othello. Can effort explain such a tragic issue?

We aim at disentangling the impact of effort on social emotions and more particularly on envy. Thus we observe the impact of effort on individual well-being and behaviour. In our experiment subjects are paired and receive endowments whether according to their performance in a real-effort task or randomly. We focus on subjects placed in situations of inferiority and ask them to report their satisfaction level before and after being exposed to unflattering social comparison. Finally, subjects can choose to reduce their opponent’s endowment by incurring a personal cost. We convey that the introduction of effort does not affect individual well-being and partially subjects’ decisions to reduce others’ income. Subjects do not reduce more often their opponent’s endowment but they cut a greater portion of their opponent’s endowment when endowments are attributed according to individual performance. Besides we observe that poor performing subjects are more prone to reduce others’ income than high performing ones. We also find evidences suggesting that envy is ought to explain reduction decisions engaged by high performing subjects and disappointment explicates reduction decisions engaged by low performing ones.

(Dis)honesty in the face of uncertain gains or losses

We examine dishonest behavior in the face of potential uncertain gains and losses in three pre-studies (N = 150, N = 225, N = 188) and a main study (N = 240). Ample research has shown that people cheat when presented with the opportunity. We use a die-under-cup paradigm, in which participants could dishonestly report a private die roll and thereby increase the odds to obtain a desired outcome. Results showed that the framing of the uncertain situation mattered: Participants who lied to decrease the likelihood to experience a loss used major lies (i.e., reporting a ‘6’), while those who lied to increase the chance to achieve an equivalent gain used more modest lies.Social decision makin

Politicians lie, so do I

This research analyzed whether political leaders make people lie via priming experiments. Priming is a non-conscious and implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus affects the response to another stimulus. Following priming theories, we proposed an innovative concept that people who perceive leaders to be dishonest (such as liar) are likely to lie themselves. We designed three experiments to analyze and critically discussed the potential influence of prime effect on lying behavior, through the prime effect of French political leaders (inc. general politicians, presidents and parties). Experiment 1 discovered that participants with non-politician-prime were less likely to lie (compared to politician-prime). Experiment 2A discovered that, compared to Hollande-prime, Sarkozy-prime led to lying behavior both in gravity (i.e. bigger lies) and frequency (i.e. lying more frequently). Experiment 2B discovered that Republicans-prime yielded an impact on more lying behavior, and Sarkozy-prime made such impact even stronger. Overall, the research findings suggest that lying can be triggered by external influencers such as leaders, presidents and politicians in the organizations. Our findings have provided valuable insights to organizational leaders and managers in their personnel management practice, especially in the intervention of lying behavior. Our findings also have offered new insights to explain non-conscious lying behavior

Inégalités et décisions de destruction : quatre essais sur l'envie

A travers cette thèse, nous étudions l'envie et explorons l'impact de cette dernière sur le bien-être et le comportement individuel. Cette thèse se compose de quatre chapitres. Dans un premier chapitre, nous définissons l'envie en nous référant à des travaux réalisés en philosophie et en psychologie. Nous concluons que l'envie est une émotion déclenchée par la prise de conscience d'un attribut désiré, possédé par autrui et qui se caractérise par une douloureuse tristesse incluant des sentiments d'hostilité. Ensuite nous élaborons un protocole expérimental dont l'objectif est d'étudier l'impact de l'envie sur le bien-être et sur le comportement individuel. Nous capturons l'envie à travers des méthodes d'évaluation subjective et nous examinons si l'envie incite les sujets à réduire la dotation de leur partenaire malgré le coût personnel induit par la réduction. Nous observons que l'envie est fortement présente mais n'explique pas pourquoi les sujets réduisent la dotation des autres. Les inégalités de dotations mesurées en termes relatifs modulent les décisions des sujets à réduire la dotation d'autrui. Dans le chapitre trois, nous nous intéressons à l'impact de l'effort sur l'envie. Pour cela nous élaborons deux traitements. Dans un traitement, les sujets reçoivent des dotations de manière aléatoire alors que dans l'autre traitement les dotations sont attribuées en fonction de la performance de chaque sujet lors d'une tache effectuée avant l'expérience. Nous trouvons que l'effort n'affecte pas la satisfaction des sujets mais partiellement leur comportement : les sujets ne sont pas plus nombreux a réduire les gains des autres mais ils en réduisent une plus grande partie. Enfin, nous nous intéressons à un type de sujets particulier dans lequel l'envie est susceptible d'être ressentie fortement : les sportifs. Nous concluons que la pratique d'activités sportives pousse les agents à ressentir de l'envie et les incite à entreprendre des actions de réduction.Throughout this dissertation we aim at identifying envy and investigating its impacts on both individual well-being and behaviour. This dissertation consists of four chapters. The first chapter is devoted to the definition of envy by referring to both researches on philosophy and psychology. We convey that envy can be defined as an emotion triggered by the awareness of a desired attribute enjoyed by another person characterised by a painful sadness including feelings of hostility. In the second chapter, we implement an experiment so as to investigate the impact of envy on individual well-being and behaviour. We capture envy through referring to self-report methods and explore whether envy pushes subjects to reduce their opponent's endowment at a personal cost. We observe that envy is highly present but does not explain why subjects reduce others' income. Inequalities between subjects' endowments measured in relative terms modulate subjects' decisions to reduce others' income. In chapter three, we study how effort affects envy and whether the impact of envy on both individual well-being and behaviour is amplified or weakened by effort. To fulfil our purpose, we implement two different conditions. In one condition endowments are randomly attributed to subjects and in the other condition endowments are allocated according to each subject's performance in a task. We observe that effort does not affect subjects' satisfaction and partially their behaviour : subjects do not reduce more often their opponent's endowment but they cut a higher portion of their opponent's endowment when endowments are attributed according to individual effort. In the final chapter, we focus on a specific category of subjects in which envy is ought to be experienced intensively : subjects practicing sport activities. We observe that sport practice pushes subjects to experience envy and exerts them to engage in reduction decisions

Fare evasion and information provision: What information should be provided to reduce fare-evasion?

To fight fare evasion, Public Transport Companies (PTC) mainly use two strategies: increasing inspection to detect fare evaders and enforcing fines incurred in case of being caught. PTC communicate differently on sanctions and inspection probabilities. Little is known about the effects of such a communication on fare evasion. Using a survey-based experiment, we examine experimentally what information (fine or inspection rate) and what framing of that information (minimum, maximum, average and range) can better refrain people from travelling irregularly on public transports. We found relatively high levels of fare evasion intentions and results on deterrence consistent with the existing literature. We showed that participants are not sensitive to the content of the information delivered nor to its framing when considering to fare evade or not. We found that beliefs about the pervasiveness of fare evasion (e.g., the social norm) seems to be the main determinant to fare evade

Are athletes more cooperative than nonathletes? A laboratory experiment

International audienceFormer athletic employees receive a better wage when hired than other employees because recruiters associate positive values to athletic participation. Whereas athletes are considered as more cooperative than others, this assumption lacks empirical support. We implement a laboratory experiment in order to examine whether athletes (i.e., individuals engaged in intense athletic participation) exhibit more cooperative behaviours than nonathletes. We compare the cooperative behaviours of athletes and nonathletes in a single-shot public good game using a variant of the strategy method. We find that athletes exhibit significantly more conditional cooperative behaviours than nonathletes but no significant differences in unconditional behaviours

Facing expectations: Those that we prefer to fulfil and those that we disregard

We argue that people choosing prosocial distribution of goods (e.g., in dictator games) make this choice because they do not want to disappoint their partner rather than because of a direct preference for the chosen prosocial distribution. The chosen distribution is a means to fulfil one's partner's expectations. We review the economic experiments that corroborate this hypothesis and the experiments that deny that beliefs about others' expectations motivate prosocial choice. We then formulate hypotheses about what types of expectation motivate someone to do what is expected: these are justifiable hopeful expectations that are clearly about his own choices. We experimentally investigate how people modulate their prosociality when they face low or unreasonably high expectations. In a version of a dictator game, we provide dictators with the opportunity to modulate their transfer as a function of their partner's expectations. We observe that a significant portion of the population is willing to fulfil their partner's expectation provided that this expectation expresses a reasonable hope. We conclude that people are averse to disappointing and we discuss what models of social preferences can account for the role of expectations in determining prosocial choice, with a special attention to models of guilt aversion and social esteem