New Experimental Results on the Solidarity Game

Abstract

This paper revisits and extends the experiment on the solidarity game by Selten and Ockenfels (1998). We replicate the basic design of the solidarity game and extend it in order to test the robustness of the "fixed total sacrifice" effect and the applied strategy method. Our results only partially confirm the validity of the fixed total sacrifice effect. In a treatment with constant group-endowment rather than constant winner-endowment (Selten and Ockenfels, 1998) the predominance of the fixed total sacrifice behavior is replaced by relative "fixed gift" behavior. We additionally introduce a measure of personality characteristics and compare its specific components with pro-social behavior resulted from our experiments. We don't find any correlations between actual gift behavior and measures of empathy driven pro-social behavior used in social science.

Keywords: experimental economics, game theory, fixed total sacrifice, solidarity

JEL Classification: C91