Guilt Aversion in (New) Games: Does Partners' Payoff Vulnerability Matter?

Giuseppe Attanasi, Claire Rimbaud and Marie Claire Villeval

Abstract: We investigate whether a player's guilt aversion is modulated by the co-players' vulnerability. To this goal, we introduce new variations of a three-player Trust game in which we manipulate payoff vulnerability and endowment vulnerability. The former is the traditional vulnerability which arises when a player's material payoff depends on another player's action (e.g., recipient's payoff in a Dictator game). The latter arises when a player's initial endowment is entrusted to another player (e.g., trustor's endowment in a Trust game). Treatments vary whether trustees can condition their decision on the belief of a co-player who is payoff-vulnerable and/or endowment-vulnerable, or not vulnerable at all, and the decision rights of the vulnerable player. We find that trustees' guilt aversion is insensitive to both the dimension of the co-player's vulnerability and to the decision rights of the co-player. Guilt is activated even absent vulnerability of the co-player whose beliefs are disappointed. It is triggered by the willingness to respond to the co-player's beliefs on his strategy, regardless of whether this strategy concerns this player or a third player's vulnerability, that is, indirect vulnerability.

Keywords: Guilt Aversion; Vulnerability; Psychological Game Theory; Trust Game; Dictator Game; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-neu and nep-upt
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Published in Games and Economic Behavior, 2023, 142, pp.690-717. ⟨10.1016/j.geb.2023.09.004⟩

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Journal Article: Guilt aversion in (new) games: Does partners' payoff vulnerability matter? (2023)
Working Paper: Guilt Aversion in (New) Games: Does Partners' Payoff Vulnerability Matter? (2023)
Working Paper: Guilt Aversion in (New) Games: Does Partners’ Payoff Vulnerability Matter? (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-03620418

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2023.09.004

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