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Accidental Outcomes Guide Punishment in a “Trembling Hand” Game

How do people respond to others' accidental behaviors? Reward and punishment for an accident might depend on the actor's intentions, or instead on the unintended outcomes she brings about. Yet, existing paradigms in experimental economics do not include the possibility of accidental moneta...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Cushman, Fiery, Dreber, Anna, Wang, Ying, Costa, Jay
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726629/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19707578
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006699
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author Cushman, Fiery
Dreber, Anna
Wang, Ying
Costa, Jay
author_facet Cushman, Fiery
Dreber, Anna
Wang, Ying
Costa, Jay
author_sort Cushman, Fiery
collection PubMed
description How do people respond to others' accidental behaviors? Reward and punishment for an accident might depend on the actor's intentions, or instead on the unintended outcomes she brings about. Yet, existing paradigms in experimental economics do not include the possibility of accidental monetary allocations. We explore the balance of outcomes and intentions in a two-player economic game where monetary allocations are made with a “trembling hand”: that is, intentions and outcomes are sometimes mismatched. Player 1 allocates $10 between herself and Player 2 by rolling one of three dice. One die has a high probability of a selfish outcome, another has a high probability of a fair outcome, and the third has a high probability of a generous outcome. Based on Player 1's choice of die, Player 2 can infer her intentions. However, any of the three die can yield any of the three possible outcomes. Player 2 is given the opportunity to respond to Player 1's allocation by adding to or subtracting from Player 1's payoff. We find that Player 2's responses are influenced substantially by the accidental outcome of Player 1's roll of the die. Comparison to control conditions suggests that in contexts where the allocation is at least partially under the control of Player 1, Player 2 will punish Player 1 accountable for unintentional negative outcomes. In addition, Player 2's responses are influenced by Player 1's intention. However, Player 2 tends to modulate his responses substantially more for selfish intentions than for generous intentions. This novel economic game provides new insight into the psychological mechanisms underlying social preferences for fairness and retribution.
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spelling pubmed-27266292009-08-26 Accidental Outcomes Guide Punishment in a “Trembling Hand” Game Cushman, Fiery Dreber, Anna Wang, Ying Costa, Jay PLoS One Research Article How do people respond to others' accidental behaviors? Reward and punishment for an accident might depend on the actor's intentions, or instead on the unintended outcomes she brings about. Yet, existing paradigms in experimental economics do not include the possibility of accidental monetary allocations. We explore the balance of outcomes and intentions in a two-player economic game where monetary allocations are made with a “trembling hand”: that is, intentions and outcomes are sometimes mismatched. Player 1 allocates $10 between herself and Player 2 by rolling one of three dice. One die has a high probability of a selfish outcome, another has a high probability of a fair outcome, and the third has a high probability of a generous outcome. Based on Player 1's choice of die, Player 2 can infer her intentions. However, any of the three die can yield any of the three possible outcomes. Player 2 is given the opportunity to respond to Player 1's allocation by adding to or subtracting from Player 1's payoff. We find that Player 2's responses are influenced substantially by the accidental outcome of Player 1's roll of the die. Comparison to control conditions suggests that in contexts where the allocation is at least partially under the control of Player 1, Player 2 will punish Player 1 accountable for unintentional negative outcomes. In addition, Player 2's responses are influenced by Player 1's intention. However, Player 2 tends to modulate his responses substantially more for selfish intentions than for generous intentions. This novel economic game provides new insight into the psychological mechanisms underlying social preferences for fairness and retribution. Public Library of Science 2009-08-26 /pmc/articles/PMC2726629/ /pubmed/19707578 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006699 Text en Cushman et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Cushman, Fiery
Dreber, Anna
Wang, Ying
Costa, Jay
Accidental Outcomes Guide Punishment in a “Trembling Hand” Game
title Accidental Outcomes Guide Punishment in a “Trembling Hand” Game
title_full Accidental Outcomes Guide Punishment in a “Trembling Hand” Game
title_fullStr Accidental Outcomes Guide Punishment in a “Trembling Hand” Game
title_full_unstemmed Accidental Outcomes Guide Punishment in a “Trembling Hand” Game
title_short Accidental Outcomes Guide Punishment in a “Trembling Hand” Game
title_sort accidental outcomes guide punishment in a “trembling hand” game
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726629/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19707578
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006699
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