Minimally Acceptable Altruism and the Ultimatum Game

Minimally acceptable altruism and the ultimatum game

Accepting Zero in the Ultimatum Game Does Not Reflect Selfish Preferences

The study shows that subjects who set their minimum acceptable offer equal to zero in an ultimatum game (UG) are the most generous dictators in a dictator game. The finding implies that interpreting indiscriminately the acceptance of low UG offers as payoff maximization can be misleading and suggests that altruism and/or the desire to maximize welfare are to a large extent behind. JEL Classific...

Kinship, Family, and Gender Effects in the Ultimatum Game.

Kinship and reciprocity are two main predictors of altruism. The ultimatum game has been used to study altruism in many small-scale societies. We used the ultimatum game to examine effects of individuals' family and kin relations on altruistic behavior in a kin-based horticultural community in rural Dominica. Results show sex-specific effects of kin on ultimatum game play. Average coefficient o...

The Ultimatum Game: a Study in Social Systems Control

The fact that the classical game-theoretic solution to the Ultimatum game is not a good model of actual human social behavior casts doubt on the validity of the classical solution concept of individual rationality. Satisficing game theory provides a framework within which complex social environments such as compromise, negotiation, and altruism can be explicitly modeled, and offers an alternati...

Survival of altruistic preferences in the ultimatum game: an agent-based approach

We examine the survivability of altruistic preferences in the Ultimatum Game through two sets of agent-based simulations. We find that a self-centered, memory-based strategy updating provides a more plausible basis for altruism than classic imitate-your-neighbor learning. If memory of second-player acceptance thresholds is longer than memory of first-player offers, then our model behavior is co...