Personality Preferences and Pre-Commitment: Behavioral Explanations in Ultimatum Games

Abstract

This paper uses responder pre-commitment and the Jungian theory of mental activity and psychological type, as measured by the widely-used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), to gain insight into subject behavior in a laboratory ultimatum bargaining experiment. Three experiment design details are noteworthy: (1) one design requires responders to make a nonbinding pre-commitment rejection level prior to seeing the offer, (2) one design requires responders to make a binding pre-commitment rejection level, and (3) one design includes a third person (or “hostage”) who makes no decision, but whose payment depends on the proposal being accepted. In general, we find behavior in our experiment to be consistent with hypotheses based on theoretical underpinnings of the MBTI and its descriptions of psychological type.