Behavioural Processes 115 (2015) 149–155

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Behavioural Processes
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/behavproc

Proportion offered in the Dictator and Ultimatum Games decreases

with amount and social distance
Christopher Bechler, Leonard Green ∗ , Joel Myerson
Washington University in St. Louis, Department of Psychology, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Behavior in both the Dictator Game and the Ultimatum Game is of special interest because proposers
Received 13 November 2014 often violate the predictions of normative economic theory: On average, offers in both games are higher
Received in revised form 6 April 2015 than what would be considered income-maximizing. In the present study, the initial amount provided to
Accepted 6 April 2015
the proposer and the social distance between the proposer and the respondent were both varied across
Available online 8 April 2015
a wide range, and the effects of these manipulations on offers in the Dictator Game and the Ultimatum
Game were examined in a broad sample of participants recruited via MTurk. Although the amount offered
Keywords:
was consistently higher in the Ultimatum Game, the proportion of the amount offered decreased as the
Economic games
Dictator Game
size of the initial amount increased in both games. Moreover, the proportion offered also decreased as a
Ultimatum Game function of the social distance between the proposer and the responder. The present results extend our
Initial amount knowledge of the determinants of proposers’ behavior in two-person economic games and emphasize the
Social distance importance of social distance and the amount of money at stake as factors that affect people’s economic
decisions.
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Two-person economic games are widely used in experimental
and behavioral economics to test predictions of economic theo-
ries and to gain insight into factors that influence people’s choices
in everyday social interactions (Camerer et al., 2011). Two eco-
nomic games, the Dictator Game and the Ultimatum Game, have
received considerable attention as tests of normative economic
theory, particularly as a means of studying the potential roles
of self-interest and altruism in economic decision-making (for a
review, see Camerer, 2003). These two games also have real-world
applications (e.g., contract negotiations). In the Dictator Game, a
first player (the ‘proposer’) is given a sum of money and is free to
offer as much or as little of this amount to a second player (the
‘responder’), and keep what is left. The responder has no say in the
matter. The Ultimatum Game is similar except that the responder
has the option to accept or reject the proposer’s offer. If the offer is
accepted, then both players receive the amounts agreed on; if the
offer is rejected, however, both players receive nothing.
Normative economic theory predicts that in a non-repeated
game, “rational” proposers will offer the smallest amount possible
to the responder regardless of which form of the game is played,
and that in the Ultimatum Game, the “rational” responder should
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 314 935 6534; fax: +1 314 935 7588.
E-mail address: LGreen@wustl.edu (L. Green).
always accept the offer. However, participants typically do not act
as theory predicts. Rather, proposers often offer considerably more
than the minimum amount predicted. Mean offers in the Dictator
Game are about 20% of the initial amount (Oxoby and Spraggon,
2008), and mean offers in the Ultimatum Game are usually between
30 and 40% of the initial amount, with the most common offer being
a 50–50 split (Camerer and Thaler, 1995). Responders in the Ulti-
matum Game also behave “irrationally” from the point of view of
normative theory, typically rejecting offers lower than 20% of the
initial amount (Camerer and Thaler, 1995).
One suggestion as to why more than the minimum is offered in
both games and why responders often reject an offer in the Ulti-
matum Game is that proposers and responders are both influenced
by the perceived fairness of the offer. That is, proposers may offer
more than the minimum predicted by normative theory because
they think the minimum offer would be unfair, and responders may
reject such offers for the same reason. Consistent with this interpre-
tation, proposers offer less and responders are willing to accept less
when the proposer has done something either to earn the original
sum of money or to deserve being in the role of proposer (Hoffman
et al., 1994). Fairness alone, however, cannot explain why observed
offers are consistently greater than predicted. If fairness alone were
the reason, then proposers should offer equivalent amounts in both
the Dictator and Ultimatum Games, whereas in fact, proposers offer
a significantly lower percentage in the Dictator Game (e.g., Forsythe
et al., 1994). This difference in offers between the two games is pre-
sumably because in the Ultimatum Game, proposers consider the

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2015.04.003
0376-6357/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
150 C. Bechler et al. / Behavioural Processes 115 (2015) 149–155
fact that if their offer is judged by the responder to be too low, then
it risks being rejected, in which case they would receive nothing
(Roth, 1995).
Of course, economic behavior may have multiple determinants
even in simple situations, and behavioral economic research in
other areas suggests further possible determinants that have yet
to be rigorously studied. For example, few studies have evalu-
ated whether magnitude effects occur in Ultimatum and Dictator
Game situations, yet such effects are known to be extremely robust
in other choice situations where behavior presents challenges
to normative theory. For example, magnitude effects have been
studied extensively in other behavioral economic experiments,
perhaps most notably those on intertemporal choice in which the
observed shapes of discounting curves clearly violate the station-
arity hypothesis of discounted utility theory (Koopmans, 1960;
Koopmans et al., 1964). More specifically, the discounting rate (i.e.,
the rate at which the value of a delayed reward is discounted
as the wait until receipt of that reward increases) is greater for
smaller amounts of delayed reward than it is for larger amounts (for
reviews, see Frederick et al., 2002; Green and Myerson, 2004). To
date, however, there has been relatively little research that system-
atically examines the effect of the initial amount of money given the
proposer on the percentage offered the responder in either Dictator
or Ultimatum Games.
In a meta-analysis examining a variety of different potential pre-
dictors of offers in Dictator Game experiments, which themselves
were done for a variety of different purposes, Engel (2011) reported
that there was no effect of initial amount on the proportion offered
in Dictator Game studies. When analysis was restricted to stud-
ies that used more than one initial amount, however, there was
evidence of a very small magnitude effect, with dictators offer-
ing a smaller proportion when the stakes were higher. However,
the range over which amounts varied was quite limited, with the
highest initial amount being $130, and further research is clearly
needed which examines the effect of initial amount over a much
wider range.
With respect to the Ultimatum Game, Forsythe et al. (1994) com-
pared offers in the Ultimatum Game when proposers were given
either $5 or $10 in real money, and found no significant difference
in the proportion offered. Hoffman et al. (1996) were concerned
that the non-normative behavior typically observed was an arti-
fact of the small stakes involved, and therefore gave proposers an
initial amount of either $10 or $100, and reported no significant
difference in the percentage offered. The usual finding continues to
be that proposers offer approximately 30–40% of the initial amount
regardless of what that amount was (i.e., there is no magnitude
effect), but as noted previously, the initial amount has rarely been
varied systematically.
A recent study conducted in India (Andersen et al., 2011) did
report a magnitude effect on proposers’ behavior (percentage
offered decreased as the initial amount increased). Participants
received actual money for their participation and initial amounts
ranged from 20 to 20,000 rupees, with the highest stakes condition
amounting to about a year’s wages locally. However, the primary
focus of the study was on responders’ behavior, and proposers were
given special instructions designed to elicit low offers in order to
increase the likelihood that there would be rejections. As a result, it
is unclear whether the magnitude effect observed in this study was
due to the special instructions, the relatively high stakes in terms
of local wages, or the special population studied (villagers in rural
India). It is especially unclear because a study in Indonesia that com-
pared low and high stakes, again relative to local wages, found no
difference in the mean proportion offered (Cameron, 1999). Thus,
the question of whether there is a magnitude effect in the Ultima-
tum Game such that the proportion offered varies systematically
with the initial amount remains unresolved, and accordingly, the
present study was designed to address this question.
Another variable of interest that may well influence the pro-
portion of the initial amount that is offered is the social distance
between proposer and responder. Previous research in behav-
ioral economics under this rubric has focused on the degree of
anonymity of the proposer and responder (e.g., Charness & Gneezy,
2008; Hoffman et al., 1996). Although this research may have
important implications for theories of reciprocal altruism and
hypotheses concerning the role of anticipated social consequences
in economic decision making, there is another aspect of social dis-
tance that corresponds more closely to what is usually meant by
this term outside economics. That is, social distance, in addition
to referring to the degree of social isolation, in the sense of free-
dom from repercussions, also often refers simply to how close one
person feels to another. In a series of studies, Rachlin and Jones
(2008a; 2008b; Jones and Rachlin, 2006) had participants imag-
ine that they had made a list of the 100 people closest to them in
the world, ranging from their dearest friend or relative at position
#1 to a mere acquaintance at #100. Rachlin and Jones (2008a,b)
showed that the amount of money a participant would forego in
order to give money to another person varies inversely with the
social distance between them.
Rachlin and Jones (2010) describe a study that examined offers
in both the Ultimatum and Dictator Games, which varied the range
of amounts from $10 to $100,000 and the social distance from 1
to 100. They report that the percentage of the initial endowment
offered decreased with increases in amount and social distance. The
study used a between group design for amount and an undergradu-
ate sample. The present study examines the effect of social distance
in the sense studied by Rachlin and Jones on offers in both the Dic-
tator and Ultimatum Games, using a broad sample of participants
recruited from MTurk rather than the more-typical college-student
sample. In addition, unlike the study reported by Rachlin and Jones,
the present study varied amount within participants, used more
participants per condition, and varied amount over an even larger
range.
The Dictator and Ultimatum Games are often assumed to model
economic decision making in social situations outside the labora-
tory. Many kinds of negotiations may be thought of as analogous to
the Ultimatum Game in that one person makes an offer that another
person either accepts or rejects, but if the offer is not accepted, both
may receive nothing. The Dictator Game provides a way of deter-
mining what the behavior of the person making the offer would
be if he or she did not have to consider the possibility of rejec-
tion, which may then be compared with behavior in the Ultimatum
Game. Whereas actual negotiations often take the form of iterated
games, the Dictator and Ultimatum Games address the important
initial step in such negotiations. The amounts of money involved
may range from relatively small (e.g., at yard sales) to extremely
large (e.g., buying a house), and may take place between individ-
uals who do not know each other at all as well as between close
relatives. The present study examines the roles played by these fac-
tors in determining initial offers. Finally, because the participants
in the present study were extremely diverse, we also were able to
examine proposers’ behavior in the Dictator and Ultimatum Games
as a function of demographic factors: age, gender, education, and
household income.
2. Methods
2.1. Participants
201 participants were recruited through the Amazon Mechan-
ical Turk (MTurk) participant pool for the Dictator Game, and
 C. Bechler et al. / Behavioural Processes 115 (2015) 149–155
Table 1
Demographics of the participants in the Dictator and Ultimatum Games. (Numbers may not sum to the total Ns because some participants chose not to answer certain
questions.)
Variable Category
Gender Male 104
Female 96
Age 18–24
25–29
30–39
40–49
≥50
Education Some high school
High school grad
Some college
College grad
Graduate school
Income <$25,000
$25,000–$34,999
$35,000–$49,999
$50,000–$74,999
$75,000–$99,999
≥$100,000
another 193 participants were recruited in the same fashion for
the Ultimatum Game. Participants were required to live in the
United States and have what MTurk terms a human intelligence
task (HIT) approval rate greater than or equal to 85% in order to
preview the experiment (i.e., potential participants had to have
completed 85% of their previous MTurk HITs in a manner accept-
able to the requestor who posted the HIT). The first 14 participants
to play the Dictator Game and the first 15 participants to play the
Ultimatum received $0.25 compensation deposited in their MTurk
account. Subsequent participants were given a choice at the con-
clusion of the experiment as to how they would be compensated,
either by having 25 cents deposited in their MTurk account that
day or by having 50 cents deposited in their account in 30 days.
The demographic breakdown of participants is given in Table 1.
2.2. Procedure
The experiment was administered using Qualtrics Survey Soft-
ware. After consenting to participate, participants in the Dictator
Game read the following Instructions and Directions:
Thank you for agreeing to participate in this brief study.
You will be asked to make a series of decisions regarding how much
money you might offer another person under various situations
that will be explained shortly. There are no correct or incorrect
answers, and the money is hypothetical – that is, no one will receive
the actual money. Nonetheless, we want you to make your decisions
as if the amounts and situations were real.
Before describing the situations, we want you to imagine that you
have made a list of the 100 people closest to you in the world,
ranging from your dearest friend or relative at position #1 to a
mere acquaintance at #100. The person at number one would be
someone you know well and is your closest friend or relative. The
person at #100 might be someone you recognize and encounter but
perhaps you may not even know their name. You do not have to
physically create the list – just imagine that you have done so.
Imagine you have been given the amount of money shown in the
following slides. You are to divide the amount of money between
yourself and another person. You are free to give as much or as little
of the amount of money as you wish, and you will receive what is
left. Please allocate the amount you wish to offer the other person
by typing it in the space provided.
151
Dictator Game (N = 201) Ultimatum Game (N = 193)
110
82
57 68
47 45
44 32
29 22
24 26
1 3
26 26
58 69
91 70
25 25
45 43
37 32
28 32
44 40
23 30
15 11
The procedure for the Ultimatum Game was the same as that for
the Dictator Game, except for the last paragraph of the instructions
and Directions, which read:
Imagine you have been given the amount of money shown in the
following slides. You are to divide the amount of money between
yourself and another person. You are free to give as much or as little
of the amount of money as you wish, and you will receive what is
left, but only if the other person accepts your offer. If the other
person rejects your offer, however, then both of you will receive
nothing. Please allocate the amount you wish to offer the other
person by typing it in the space provided.
Participants were studied with three initial amounts ($10,
$3,000, and $250,000) at three social distances (2, 20, and 100),
determined using the social distance instructions (see above) from
Rachlin and Jones (2008a), for a total of nine conditions. The order of
conditions was randomly determined for each participant. Partici-
pants filled out a brief demographic questionnaire after completing
the nine conditions.
3. Results
Results for the Dictator Game are presented in the left panel of
Fig. 1, which shows the mean proportion of the initial amount that
was offered, plotted as a function of the initial amount and the social
distance of the responder. As may be seen, there was a clear mag-
nitude effect: Proposers offered a significantly lower proportion as
the initial amount of money increased, F(2, 199) = 69.24, p < .001,
Áp 2 = .410. Offers made when the initial amount was $10 averaged
24.1% (SD = 19.0), whereas offers made when the initial amount was
$3,000 averaged 14.6% (SD = 12.8), and offers made when the initial
amount was $250,000 averaged 10.7% (SD = 10.1). There was also
a clear effect of social distance: Proposers offered proportionally
less as the social distance between the proposer and the responder
increased, F(2, 199) = 190.39, p < .001, Áp 2 = .657. The average offers
across all initial amounts were 31.5% (SD = 18.8), 11.5% (SD = 13.2),
and 6.5% (SD = 11.6) at social distances 2, 20, and 100, respectively.
There was a significant interaction between amount and social dis-
tance, F(4, 197) = 4.14, p = .003, Áp 2 = .078.
Results for the Ultimatum Game are presented in the right panel
of Fig. 1, which shows the mean proportion of the initial amount
that was offered, plotted as a function of the initial amount and
the social distance of the responder. As with the Dictator Game,
there was both a significant magnitude effect and a significant
152 C. Bechler et al. / Behavioural Processes 115 (2015) 149–155

Dictator Game Ultimatum Game

0.5 0.5

Social Distance
0.4 2 0.4
20
Proportion Offered

100

0.3 0.3

0.2 0.2

0.1 0.1

0.0 0.0
$10 $3,000 $250,000 $10 $3,000 $250,000

Initial Amount Initial Amount

Fig.1. Mean proportion offered as a function of initial amount and social distance in the Dictator Game (left panel) and the Ultimatum Game (right panel). Error bars represent
±1 standard error of the mean.

effect of social distance: Proposers offered a significantly lower pro- 0.5

portion as the initial amount increased, F(2, 191) = 71.80, p < .001,
Áp 2 = .429, and as the social distance between the proposer and
the responder increased, F(2, 191) = 122.59, p < .001, Áp 2 = .562. The
Proportion Offered

0.4 Male
average offer was 35.8% (SD = 15.7) when the initial amount was Female
$10, 25.9% (SD = 15.7) when the initial amount was $3,000, and
22.2% (SD = 18.2) when the initial amount was $250,000. Across
all initial amounts, average offers were 39.8% (SD = 16.0), 25.4% 0.3
(SD = 17.4), and 18.7% (SD = 18.0) at social distances 2, 20, and 100,
respectively. There was no significant interaction between amount
and social distance, F(4, 189) = 1.72, p = .147. As may be seen by 0.2
comparing the proportions offered shown in the left and right pan-
els of Fig. 1, the proportions offered by proposers at each initial
amount and social distance were consistently higher in the Ulti-
0.1
matum Game than in the Dictator Game.
With the exception of gender, offers (averaged across the 9 social
distance and initial amount conditions) did not vary systemati-
cally as a function of demographic variables in either game. More 0.0
specifically, the correlation between proportion offered and age
was −.014, p = .848, in the Dictator Game, and .071, p = .325, in the
Dictator Ultimatum
Ultimatum Game. For income level, the rank order correlation was Fig. 2. Mean proportion offered as a function of gender in the Dictator and Ultima-
−.026, p = .718, for the Dictator Game, and .048, p = .509, for the Ulti- tum Games. Error bars represent ±1 standard error of the mean.
matum Game. Finally, the rank order correlation between level of
education and proportion offered was −.042, p = .550, for the Dic-
tator Game, and .061, p = .403, for the Ultimatum Game. As might of the 178 participants in the Ultimatum Game offered the choice,
be expected, there were significant correlations between income 65 chose the 25 cents and 113 chose the 50 cents. There was no
and education for participants in both the Dictator and Ultimatum significant difference between those who chose to receive 25 cents
Games; rho = .255 and .360, respectively, both ps < .001. that day and those who chose 50 cents in 30 days with respect
Interestingly, there was a gender difference in offers in the Dicta- to the average proportion offered in either the Dictator Game,
tor Game but not in the Ultimatum Game. This may be seen in Fig. 2, F(1, 186) = 1.70, p = .194, or the Ultimatum Game, F(1, 177) = 1.93,
which shows the mean proportions offered (averaged across all p = .167.
nine conditions) by men and women. Women offered significantly
more than did men in the Dictator Game, F(1, 199) = 4.15, p = .043,
Áp 2 = .021, offering an average of 18.1% (SD = 12.5) of the initial 4. Discussion
amount, compared to 14.7% (SD = 11.1) for men. In the Ultima-
tum Game, however, there was no significant difference between The present study addressed two questions relevant to both the
offers by women (28.4%, SD = 16.7) and men (27.7%, SD = 13.2), F(1, Dictator and Ultimate Games: Whether the initial amount provided
190) = 2.434, p = .120. to the proposer affects the proportion offered to the responder,
With respect to compensation, of the 187 participants in the and how the proportion offered is affected by the social distance
Dictator Game who were offered the choice, 81 chose to receive between the proposer and responder. The answers to these ques-
25 cents that day and 106 chose to receive 50 cents in 30 days; tions bear directly on the issue of the roles of fairness, altruism,
 C. Bechler et al. / Behavioural Processes 115 (2015) 149–155
and reciprocity in proposer’s decisions (for a review, see Fehr and
Schmidt, 2006).
4.1. Magnitude effects
In both the Dictator and Ultimate Games, the proportion offered
decreased as the initial amount increased. In the Dictator Game,
offers decreased by more than half (from a mean of .24 to .11, aver-
aging across social distance) as the initial amount was increased
from $10 to $250,000. These magnitude effects are considerably
larger than those previously reported, although the range over
which amounts have been varied in most previous studies was
quite limited, with the highest initial amount being $130 (Engel,
2011), but are in line with those reported by Rachlin and Jones
(2010) for amounts ranging from $10 to $100,000. To the extent
that offers in the Dictator Game reflect proposers’ notion of fair-
ness, the present results suggest that what is considered a fair
division is neither a fixed amount nor a fixed percentage of the
initial amount. That is, as the initial amount increased, the actual
amount offered increased but the percentage of the initial amount
decreased, suggesting that both absolute and relative amounts are
taken into consideration in fairness judgments. Similarly, if offers
reflect proposers’ altruistic tendencies, these tendencies appear to
be modulated by the amounts involved, with larger initial amounts
leading to offers that while larger in absolute terms, are smaller in
relative terms.
A smaller magnitude effect was observed in the Ultimatum
Game than in the Dictator Game. Averaging across social distance,
offers decreased by more than a third (from .36 to .22) as the ini-
tial amount was increased from $10 to $250,000. This finding is in
contrast to those of two studies that directly examined the effect of
the initial amount and failed to find a magnitude effect. However,
the difference in results could be due to the relative small range
of amounts examined in previous studies: $5 versus $10 (Forsythe
et al., 1994) and $10 versus $100 (Hoffman et al., 1996). Two stud-
ies have reported a magnitude effect (Andersen et al., 2011; Rachlin
and Jones, 2010). However, because the focus of the Anderson et al.
study was on responders’ behavior, proposers were given special
instructions designed to elicit low offers, making the results dif-
ficult to interpret. The study described by Rachlin and Jones used
college undergraduates as participants, and the present findings
extend the generality of their findings to a broad sample of par-
ticipants. In addition, the present study examined the effects of
amount using within-subject comparisons, which make possible
more powerful statistical comparisons.
In interpreting the smaller magnitude effects observed in the
Ultimatum Game, it is important to note that overall, the amount
offered was higher in the Ultimatum Game than in the Dictator
Game, and indeed, this was true at every amount and social dis-
tance examined. This is unlike the results described by Rachlin and
Jones, who reported a difference in offers only for the two smaller
amounts. It seems likely, however, that this may reflect a floor
effect, and the present study considerably extends the finding of
larger offers in Ultimatum Games. The difference between offers
in the Dictator and Ultimatum Games is theoretically important
because it is assumed to reflect proposers’ judgments as to what
responders will accept in addition to the factors operative in the
Dictator Game (Camerer and Thaler, 1995). That is, because there
is the possibility that an offer might be rejected if it is too low,
risk-averse proposers may offer more than they would otherwise.
It is to be noted that the absolute difference (in dollars) between
offers in the Dictator and Ultimatum Games was an increasing
function of the initial amount, and this finding is consistent with
the hypothesized role of risk aversion in the Ultimatum Game.
Although prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979) does not
take the absolute amounts of prospects into consideration, recent
153
research on probability discounting has shown that people become
more risk averse as the amount at stake (i.e., the size of the prob-
abilistic gain) increases (Myerson et al., 2011). Thus, the results
presented by Rachlin and Jones (2010) showing that the difference
between offers in the Dictator and Ultimatum Games disappears
at very large amounts (i.e., $100,000) is the exact opposite of what
would be predicted.
In contrast, the present finding that a difference between offers
in the Dictator and Ultimatum Games was observed even at the
largest amount tested (i.e., $250,000) is more in line with recent
work on probability discounting. Moreover, the difference in the
proportion offered between the Dictator Game and the Ultimatum
Game averaged across social distance remained constant across
amounts in the present study (.117, .114, and .115 at the $10,
$3,000, and $250,000 amounts). This means that the difference
in the absolute amount offered between the two games increased
systematically (from $1.17 to $342, and then to $34,500), in keep-
ing with the systematic increase in risk aversion as the amount at
stake increases observed in studies of probability discounting (e.g.,
Myerson et al., 2011).
In regard to risk aversion in economic decision making, it is
interesting to consider the implications of our finding that although
women offered more than the men in the Dictator Game, consistent
with previous findings (Engel, 2011), there was no gender differ-
ence between offers in the Ultimatum Game. One interpretation of
this finding is that although women may be more altruistic or have
different conceptions of what constitutes a fair offer, they do not
appear to differ in what they think responders (who may be either
men or women) would find acceptable, or in their degree of risk
aversion.
4.2. Social distance
The social distance between the proposer and the responder had
pronounced effects on offers in both the Dictator and Ultimatum
Games. In the Dictator Game, the average proportion of the ini-
tial amount offered was .31 at a social distance of 2 (based on the
method of Rachlin and Jones, 2008a), but only .07 at a social dis-
tance of 100, averaged across all three initial amounts. The effect of
social distance on offers in the Ultimatum Game was smaller, but
again substantial, with a mean offer of .40 at a social distance of
2 and a mean offer of .19 at a social distance of 100. At this latter
distance and with the largest initial amount ($250,000), the propor-
tion offered in the Dictator Game was extremely low (less than .03).
Although this result may appear to be consistent with normative
economic theory, the absolute size of the average offer was $6,110,
not an insignificant amount. This may be compared with the aver-
age offer at a social distance of 100 in the Ultimatum Game when
the initial amount was $250,000. In this case, the average offer was
$34,225, with the difference attesting to the degree of risk aversion
under these conditions. Of interest for future research is the impor-
tant question of whether the initial amount affects the accuracy of
proposers’ intuitions regarding the likelihood that an offer will be
rejected.
As was the case with respect to the magnitude effects, the effect
of social distance on offers in the Dictator and Ultimatum Games
suggest that if fairness and altruism play roles in how much is
offered, then proposers’ concepts of fairness and their altruistic
tendencies are not static. Rather, they are modulated by the social
distance of the responder. With respect to fairness, the present
results suggest that rather than being fixed at a specific value (e.g.,
50:50), fairness is judged on a sliding scale. When the other party is
someone close to you, a fair division of resources is likely to involve
giving up more money than when you are not close to the other
person.
154 C. Bechler et al. / Behavioural Processes 115 (2015) 149–155
So, too, the present results are consistent with the view that
the degree of altruism depends on social distance. If one makes the
reasonable assumption that participants bring their social reper-
toires, whether evolved or acquired through learning, to the present
games, then a variety of mechanisms predict such a relation.
These include kin selection (Hamilton, 1964) and group selection
(Wynne-Edwards, 1962) as well as more proximal considerations
of cooperation and reciprocity (Roth & Erev, 1995), although the
present study was not designed to distinguish among these mecha-
nisms. In a study that examined social distance and altruism among
relatives and non-relatives, Rachlin and Jones (2008b) determined
the largest amount of money that participants would forego receiv-
ing in order to give $75 to someone else. They found that the amount
that participants would forego decreased with social distance, and
importantly, participants were willing to forgo significantly more
money for the benefit of relatives than for the benefit of non-
relatives, even when both were at the same social distance. These
results suggest that independent of social distance, which by itself
plays a large role, kinship contributes to individuals’ decisions in
economic game situations.
4.3. Methodological issues
The methodology used in the present study differed from that
in many previous studies of economic games in two respects: First,
data were collected online from a sample recruited via MTurk; and
second, the decisions involved hypothetical amounts of money.
Previous studies have shown that MTurk samples tend to exhibit
behavior similar to that observed in classic laboratory studies of
financial decision making (e.g., Goodman et al., 2013; Horton et al.,
2011; Raihani and Bshary, 2012). In this regard, we would note that
if one assumes that in previous studies, proposers and responders
were not close in terms of social distance, then the offers in the
present study when the initial amount was $10 were comparable
to offers in previous reports of decisions in Dictator and Ultimatum
Games (e.g., Camerer and Thaler, 1995).
With respect to the results for the larger amounts in the present
study, the question of the potential difference between decisions
involving real and hypothetical money arises, although it is unlikely
to be addressed directly in future experiments, at least in experi-
ments using participants from developed countries. Nevertheless,
many people in this country have experience making financial
decisions (e.g., retirement planning or writing wills) that involve
allocation of large amounts of money, or know others who have
done so, and thus, the amounts involved in the present study
were not unrealistic. Moreover, we would note that based on an
extensive review of the literature of financial incentives in exper-
imental economics, Camerer and Hogarth (1999) concluded that
experiments involving real and hypothetical money typically yield
qualitatively similar results. Therefore, we would expect that if our
experiment were somehow to be replicated using real incentives
that varied over a very wide range, the pattern of effects of amount
and social distance would be similar, even if the absolute propor-
tions offered were different.
5. Conclusion
The present study examined the effects of amount and social
distance, both of which were varied over a large range, in a diverse
sample of participants (see Table 1), and the findings extend the
generality of findings of two-person economic games and provide
important information regarding factors that influence people’s
everyday actions. In addition, the present study suggests a way to
follow up on an insightful proposal made by Camerer and Thaler
(1995) that has received relatively little attention by experimen-
talists. Although researchers often invoke concepts like altruism
when discussing why people offer more in Ultimatum and Dicta-
tor Games than would be predicted by normative economic theory,
Camerer and Thaler (1995) suggested that decisions in these games
may say less about such concepts and more about what they termed
“manners.” As they wrote, “Our view is similar to that of Hoffman
et al. (1994), who prefer to describe the behavior as a manifesta-
tion of rules of reciprocity that people learn in everyday life.” With
respect to social distance, for example, they wrote, “Etiquette may
require you to share a windfall with a friend, but it certainly does not
require you to give up some of your hard-earned year-end bonus
to a stranger.” So, too, etiquette does not require one to share the
same proportion of a large amount as of a small amount.
Although conceptualizing behavior in economic games in terms
of manners frees theoreticians from the need to explain what is
being optimized (e.g., how altruism promotes fitness), this view
is hard to test if the rules of etiquette do not vary, as may be the
case if research involves primarily individuals from the same or
similar cultures. We would suggest that if economic game behavior
involves individuals’ conception of fairness as defined by the rules
of etiquette, then individuals from cultures that differ in etiquette
(as cultures do) should differ in their economic game behavior.
Several studies have reported cross-cultural differences in eco-
nomic game behavior and considered their implications for the
role of social norms and rules in such behavior (Guala & Mittone,
2010; Henrich et al., 2005; Roth, 1995). The present findings sug-
gest that one potentially useful way to approach this issue will be
to look not simply at offers and responses to these offers, but also
at whether these behaviors differ as a function of social distance
and the amounts involved, with the key question being whether
any differences that are observed correspond to differences in the
rules of etiquette.
Acknowledgements
This manuscript is based on the senior honors thesis submitted
by Chris Bechler to the Department of Economics at Washington
University, which received the 2013 Frank W. Taussig Award from
Omicron Delta Epsilon for best undergraduate or recent graduate
article in economics. We thank Drs. Dorothy Petersen and Bruce
Petersen of the Economics Department for their encouragement
and valuable comments.
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