Christian Thöni

Antisocial Punishment Across Societies

We document the widespread existence of antisocial punishment, that is, the sanctioning of people who behave prosocially. Our evidence comes from public goods experiments that we conducted in 16 comparable participant pools around the world. However, there is a huge cross-societal variation. Some participant pools punished the high contributors as much as they punished the low contributors, whereas in others people only punished low contributors. In some participant pools, antisocial punishment was strong enough to remove the cooperation-enhancing effect of punishment. We also show that weak norms of civic cooperation and the weakness of the rule of law in a country are significant predictors of antisocial punishment. Our results show that punishment opportunities are socially beneficial only if complemented by strong social norms of cooperation.

Culture and cooperation.

Does the cultural background influence the success with which genetically unrelated individuals cooperate in social dilemma situations? In this paper, we provide an answer by analysing the data of Herrmann et al. (2008a), who studied cooperation and punishment in 16 subject pools from six different world cultures (as classified by Inglehart & Baker (2000)). We use analysis of variance to disentangle the importance of cultural background relative to individual heterogeneity and group-level differences in cooperation. We find that culture has a substantial influence on the extent of cooperation, in addition to individual heterogeneity and group-level differences identified by previous research. The significance of this result is that cultural background has a substantial influence on cooperation in otherwise identical environments. This is particularly true in the presence of punishment opportunities.

Cross-cultural differences in Norm enforcement

We argue that the lack of large cross-cultural differences in many games with student subjects from developed countries may be due to the games studied. These games tap primarily basic psychological reactions, like fairness, and reciprocity. Once we look at norm-enforcement, in particular punishment, we find large differences even among culturally rather homogeneous student groups from developed countries

Do Managers Reciprocate? Field Experimental Evidence from a Competitive Market

A substantive amount of lab experimental evidence suggests that the norm of reciprocity has important economic consequences. However, it is unclear whether the norm of reciprocity survives in a natural and competitive environment with experienced agents. For this purpose we analyze data from a natural field experiment conducted with sales representatives who were instructed to randomly distribute product samples as gifts to their business partners. We find that distributing gifts to store managers boosts sales revenue substantially, which is consistent with the notion of reciprocity. However, the results underline that the nature of the relationship between market participants crucially affects the prevalence of reciprocal behavior.

Micromotives, Microstructure, and Macrobehavior: The Case of Voluntary Cooperation

How micromotives, the microstructural features of interactions, and macrobehavior are related is a fundamental question in all social sciences. In this article we argue that laboratory experiments are a useful tool to study this question, because the experimenter can measure motivations, manipulate microstructures, and sometimes even exploit variation in the macrosocial environment. We illustrate the experimental approach with the help of four examples from the context of voluntary cooperation. The examples (from previous and new experiments) illustrate the link between individual pro-social motives and wage formation in labor markets, the inevitability of the “Tragedy of the Commons,” and two potential ways to avoid the tragedy: sorting and punishment.

Cournot Competition and Hit-and-Run Entry and Exit in a Teaching Experiment

Instructors can use a computerized experiment to introduce students to imperfect competition in courses on introductory economics, industrial organization, game theory, and strategy and management. In addition to introducing students to strategic thinking in general, the experiment serves to demonstrate that profits of a firm fall as the number of competitors is increased in a market and that firms enter profitable markets. The authors have used the experiment in undergraduate classes on strategy and management as well as in master of business administration courses with great success.

Bimodal Bidding in Experimental All-Pay Auctions

We report results from experimental first-price, sealed-bid, all-pay auctions for a good with a common and known value. We observe bidding strategies in groups of two and three bidders and under two extreme information conditions. As predicted by the Nash equilibrium, subjects use mixed strategies. In contrast to the prediction under standard assumptions, bids are drawn from a bimodal distribution: very high and very low bids are much more frequent than intermediate bids. Standard risk preferences cannot account for our results. Bidding behavior is, however, consistent with the predictions of a model with reference dependent preferences as proposed by the prospect theory.

Overconfidence and Career Choice

People self-assess their relative ability when making career choices. Thus, confidence in their own abilities is likely an important factor for selection into various career paths. In a sample of 711 first-year students we examine whether there are systematic differences in confidence levels across fields of study. We find that our experimental confidence measures significantly vary between fields of study: While students in business related academic disciplines (Political Science, Law, Economics, and Business Administration) exhibit the highest confidence levels, students of Humanities range at the other end of the scale. This may have important implications for subsequent earnings and professions students select themselves in.

Survey Response and Observed Behavior

Since decades, cross-cultural psychology examines moral values using data from standardized surveys, assuming that values guide human behavior. We add to this literature by studying the link between moral values and various forms of prosocial behavior, using data from respondents of the sixth World Values Survey in Germany who participated in an online behavioral experiment. The experiment consists of a series of incentivized tasks and allows us to elaborate the association between survey-measured values and three facets of observed prosocial behavior. The evidence boils down to three findings. While (a) emancipative values relate to higher common pool contributions and (b) higher donations to charitable organizations, (c) secular values are linked with more productive and less protective investments. As these results conform to key theories and reach empirical significance in a major postindustrial nation, we conclude that we have important evidence at hand highlighting the potential of combined survey-experiment methods to establish value–behavior links that are otherwise inexplorable.

Nudging Generosity: Choice Architecture and Cognitive Factors in Charitable Giving

In an experimental setup we investigate the effect of providing a list of default charities on donation decisions. In the treatment group, subjects can either specify a charity of their choice, or select one from a list of five well-known charities; in the control group we do not provide the list. In a sample of 869 subjects we find a large effect: Offering a list of default charities doubles the fraction of donors, as well as the revenue for charities, i.e., we observe a strong treatment effect on the extensive margin, but no effect at the intensive margin. We find that the treatment intervention particularly affects subjects who tend to make intuitive choices. Our results point to the importance of psychological factors like intuition in determining donation decisions, and suggest that the decision whether to donate and the decision on the donation amount are governed by two separate cognitive processes.