IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jrp/jrpwrp/2008-092.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

(Over-)Stylizing experimental findings and theorizing with sweeping generality

Author

Listed:
  • Werner Güth

    (Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena, Germany)

  • Hartmut Kliemt

    (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

  • M. Vittoria Levatia

    (Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Metodi Matematici, University of Bari, Italy)

Abstract

Human decision making is a process guided by different and partly competing motivations that can each dominate behavior and lead to different effects depending on strength and circumstances. "Over-stylizing" neglects such competing concerns and context-dependence, although it facilitates the emergence of elaborate general theories. We illustrate by examples from social dilemma experiments and inequality aversion theories that sweeping empirical claims should be avoided.

Suggested Citation

  • Werner Güth & Hartmut Kliemt & M. Vittoria Levatia, 2008. "(Over-)Stylizing experimental findings and theorizing with sweeping generality," Jena Economics Research Papers 2008-092, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    • Handle: RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2008-092
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://oweb.b67.uni-jena.de/Papers/jerp2008/wp_2008_092.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Guth, Werner & Huck, Steffen & Muller, Wieland, 2001. "The Relevance of Equal Splits in Ultimatum Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 161-169, October.
    2. Axel Ockenfels & Gary E. Bolton, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March.
    3. Guth, Werner & Huck, Steffen & Ockenfels, Peter, 1996. "Two-Level Ultimatum Bargaining with Incomplete Information: An Experimental Study," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(436), pages 593-604, May.
    4. Werner Güth & Hartmut Kliemt & M. Vittoria Levati & Georg von Wangenheim, 2007. "On the Coevolution of Retribution and Trustworthiness: An (Indirect) Evolutionary and Experimental Analysis," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(1), pages 143-157, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Clark, Andrew E. & D'Ambrosio, Conchita, 2014. "Attitudes to Income Inequality: Experimental and Survey Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 8136, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Carlsson, Fredrik & Kataria, Mitesh & Krupnick, Alan & Lampi, Elina & Löfgren, Åsa & Qin, Ping & Sterner, Thomas, 2013. "A fair share: Burden-sharing preferences in the United States and China," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 1-17.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Güth, Werner & Kocher, Martin G., 2014. "More than thirty years of ultimatum bargaining experiments: Motives, variations, and a survey of the recent literature," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 396-409.
    2. Pamela Schmitt, 2004. "On Perceptions of Fairness: The Role of Valuations, Outside Options, and Information in Ultimatum Bargaining Games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 7(1), pages 49-73, February.
    3. Giorgio Coricelli & Luis González Morales & Amelie Mahlstedt, 2006. "The Investment Game With Asymmetric Information," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 13-30, February.
    4. Philipp E. Otto & Daniel Dittmer, 2019. "Simultaneous but independent ultimatum game: strategic elasticity or social motive dependency?," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 48(1), pages 61-80, March.
    5. Adrian Bruhin & Ernst Fehr & Daniel Schunk, 2019. "The many Faces of Human Sociality: Uncovering the Distribution and Stability of Social Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 1025-1069.
    6. Ubeda, Paloma, 2014. "The consistency of fairness rules: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 88-100.
    7. Kai Barron & Heike Harmgart & Steffen Huck & Sebastian O. Schneider & Matthias Sutter, 2023. "Discrimination, Narratives, and Family History: An Experiment with Jordanian Host and Syrian Refugee Children," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(4), pages 1008-1016, July.
    8. Chakravarty, Sugato & Jain, Pankaj & Upson, James & Wood, Robert, 2012. "Clean Sweep: Informed Trading through Intermarket Sweep Orders," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(2), pages 415-435, April.
    9. Sandro Casal & Matteo Ploner & Alec N. Sproten, 2019. "Fostering The Best Execution Regime: An Experiment About Pecuniary Sanctions And Accountability In Fiduciary Money Management," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 57(1), pages 600-616, January.
    10. Khalmetski, Kiryl & Ockenfels, Axel & Werner, Peter, 2015. "Surprising gifts: Theory and laboratory evidence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 163-208.
    11. John A. List, 2007. "On the Interpretation of Giving in Dictator Games," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(3), pages 482-493.
    12. Agnès Festré, 2019. "On the Nature of Fair Behaviour: Further Evidence," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 193-207, December.
    13. repec:cup:judgdm:v:16:y:2021:i:5:p:1267-1289 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. van Damme, Eric & Binmore, Kenneth G. & Roth, Alvin E. & Samuelson, Larry & Winter, Eyal & Bolton, Gary E. & Ockenfels, Axel & Dufwenberg, Martin & Kirchsteiger, Georg & Gneezy, Uri & Kocher, Martin G, 2014. "How Werner Güth's ultimatum game shaped our understanding of social behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 292-318.
    15. Bellemare, C. & Kroger, S. & van Soest, A.H.O., 2007. "Preferences, Intentions, and Expectations : A Large-Scale Experiment With a Representative Subject Pool," Discussion Paper 2007-64, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    16. Fabio Galeotti & Maria Montero & Anders Poulsen, 2022. "The Attraction and Compromise Effects in Bargaining: Experimental Evidence," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 2987-3007, April.
    17. Irlenbusch, Bernd & Sliwka, Dirk, 2003. "Transparency and Reciprocal Behavior," IZA Discussion Papers 887, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Charles Bellemare & Sabine Kröger & Arthur van Soest, 2008. "Measuring Inequity Aversion in a Heterogeneous Population Using Experimental Decisions and Subjective Probabilities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(4), pages 815-839, July.
    19. Ockenfels, Axel & Werner, Peter, 2012. "‘Hiding behind a small cake’ in a newspaper dictator game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 82-85.
    20. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    21. Khalmetski, Kiryl & Rockenbach, Bettina & Werner, Peter, 2017. "Evasive lying in strategic communication," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 59-72.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Context-dependent preferences; Experimental economics; Equity theories.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2008-092. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Markus Pasche (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.jenecon.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.
    pFad - Phonifier reborn

    Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

    Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


    Alternative Proxies:

    Alternative Proxy

    pFad Proxy

    pFad v3 Proxy

    pFad v4 Proxy