Distinguishing reciprocity from the joy of destruction: An anatomy of money burning game
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The joy of destruction game developed by Abbink is typically used to measure the anti-social behavior. Two players decide at the same time if they want to burn the partner’s money for a small cost. While original authors claim that motives behind money burning lie in the pleasure of being nasty, other scientists suggest to explain it by an inequality aversion, or by reciprocity that comes from simultaneous decision-making. We replicated laboratory experiment by Abbink & Sadrieh (2009) and added steps to distinguish between reciprocity and pleasure of being nasty. Four stages included replication of the original experiment, beliefs elicitation, strategy method decisions and control for inequality aversion. In addition, participants filled the questionnaire with a measurement of IRI – interpersonal reactivity index. From 300 subjects attending our experiment, those who decided to burn partner’s money formed only 8.7% of all participants. Almost half of the subjects acted according to the decision of partner, with a belief about the partner’s action positively correlated with actual burning. Inequality aversion was important only for a small number of subjects, and pleasure of being nasty (burned partner’s money regardless of her decision) was the driver of behavior only in 1.7% of all cases. These pure destructors had also significantly lower IRI than others. Our results suggest that anti-social behavior in the joy of destruction game is driven by reciprocity. The situational factor is what matters – when simultaneity of decision-making was away, the burning rate decreased significantly. |
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