Words make people think, ... but pictures make people feel: The effect negative vs. positive images on charitable behavior

We ran an experiment where the subjects initially played a four-round dictator game, after which each subject was shown either a set of positive images or a set of negative images. Finally the subjects played another four-round dictator game.
The effect of the sign of images shown is clear on the players’ behaviors: positive images have moderate effects on charitable behavior while negative images dramatically increase charity.
We could therefore infer from our experimental results that showing negative images of the Haitian and Chilean catastrophes to the international public would have significant positive impacts on international donations to the victims and the rebuilding programs in both countries

Church attendance in Spain (1930-1992): Gender differences and secularization

This paper uses retrospective data from the ISSP98 database to reconstruct church-attendance trends in Spain from 1930 to 1992. Time series analysis is performed to examine religious changes in two parallel ways: first, to determine both male and female church-attendance trends and second, to study the gender effect, that is, differences between males and females regarding church attendance. Our results indicate that: i) both male and female church attendance is declining at a rate of 2% annually ii) gender differences remain unaltered for the period analyzed.church-attendance trends

Self-discrimination: A field experiment on obesity.

While it is well-established in the literature that obese people are discriminated against in the working environment, little is known about their own actual behavior. Our experimental setting investigates whether these potentially discriminated people respond in a different way when faced with the opportunity of earning a positive amount of money. Significant lower money requests by people who are self-reported as obese confirm our self-discrimination hypothesis, offering an additional explanation for the wage gap; Thus, it seems that these obese people earn less not only because of discrimination against them but also because they themselves are less demanding. Interestingly, results are more robust for females, especially for those who "feel", but they are not actually, obese.Discrimination, obesity, field experiment, gender, self-perception

Fast or Fair? A Study of Response Times

This paper uses a modified dictator game to investigate the relationship between response times and social preferences. We find that egoistic subjects make faster decisions than subjects with social preferences. Moreover, our within-analysis reveals that, for a given individual, egoistic payoff maximizing decisions are reached quicker than choices expressing social preferences.response times; social preferences

Accounting for real wealth in heterogeneous-endowment public good games

Wealth heterogeneity infuences people's behavior in several socioeconomic environments, especially when groups consisting of "unequal" members have to take a collective action which affects all members equally or proportionally. After eliciting real out-of-lab wealth, we form 4-player groups playing an one-shot public good game with heterogeneous laboratory endowments. Endowing subjects according or against their real wealth gives rise to a series of interesting results. Endowment heterogeneity, lack of real relative wealth information and being "rich" both inside and outside the lab raise contributions. Finally, when eliciting subjects' beliefs, we find out that only relatively "poor" subjects expect others to contribute more than what they actually are prepared to do theirselves.Public goods, experiment, endowment heterogeneity, real wealth

Luis Farré : ficha biobibliográfica

Fil: Farré, Luis

An experimental test of prejudice about foreign people

This paper o¤ers two related issues: (i ) an applications of beliefs about the cooperative behavior of others to policy-oriented issues, (ii ) a method of explor- ing prejudices (toward others) where interviewees are oblivious of its purpose. We studied contributions and guesses about others?contributions through an experimental game. Prejudice is examined as an implicitly held belief by a Spanish college student towards any of the speci?ed foreign population groups (i.e. the Asians, the Africans, the Latin Americans and the Westerners). The results show that: at the individual level, there exists some subjects that harbor strong positive (and negative) prejudices toward the foreigners. The prejudice models ?tted also show that: own contributions, femaleness, individual wealth; and beliefs about income status, cultural status, religious intensity, societal co- operation and political orientation have strong in?uences on racial prejudice.Beliefs, Prejudice, Public Goods Game

What Do We Expect from Our Friends?

We conduct a field experiment in a large real-world social network to examine how subjects expect to be treated by their friends and by strangers who make allocation decisions in modified dictator games. While recipients’ beliefs accurately account for the extent to which friends will choose more generous allocations than strangers (i.e. directed altruism), recipients are not able to anticipate individual differences in the baseline altruism of allocators (measured by giving to an unnamed recipient, which is predictive of generosity towards named recipients). Recipients who are direct friends with the allocator, or even recipients with many common friends, are no more accurate in recognizing intrinsically altruistic allocators. Recipient beliefs are significantly less accurate than the predictions of an econometrician who knows the allocator’s demographic characteristics and social distance, suggesting recipients do not have information on unobservable characteristics of the allocator.dictator games, beliefs, baseline altruism, directed altruism, social networks

What Do We Expect from Our Friends?

We conduct a field experiment in a large real-world social network to examine how subjects expect to be treated by their friends and by strangers who make allocation decisions in modified dictator games. While recipients beliefs accurately account for the extent to which friends will choose more generous allocations than strangers (i.e. directed altruism), recipients are not able to anticipate individual differences in the baseline altruism of allocators (measured by giving to an unnamed recipient, which is predictive of generosity towards named recipients). Recipients who are direct friends with the allocator, or even recipients with many common friends, are no more accurate in recognizing intrinsically altruistic allocators. Recipient be- liefs are significantly less accurate than the predictions of an econometrician who knows the allocators demographic characteristics and social distance, suggesting recipients do not have information on unobservable characteristics of the allocator.dictator games, beliefs, baseline altruism, directed altruism, social networks

Strategic behavior in Schelling dynamics: A new result and experimental evidence

In this paper we experimentally test Schelling’s (1971) segregation model and confirm the striking result of segregation. In addition, we extend Schelling’s model theoretically by adding strategic behavior and moving costs. We obtain a unique subgame perfect equilibrium in which rational agents facing moving costs may find it optimal not to move (anticipating other participants’ movements). This equilibrium is far for full segregation. We run experiments for this extended Schelling model. We find that the percentage of strategic players dramatically increases with the cost of moving and that the degree of segregation depends on the distribution of rational subjects.Subgame perfect equilibrium, segregation, experimental games