Testing guilt aversion

B-Tier
Journal: Games and Economic Behavior
Year: 2010
Volume: 68
Issue: 1
Pages: 95-107

Score contribution per author:

0.503 = (α=2.01 / 4 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Guilt averse individuals experience a utility loss if they believe they let someone down. For example, generosity depends on what the donor believes that the recipient expects to receive. We measure guilt aversion in three separate experiments: a dictator game experiment, a complete information trust game experiment, and a hidden action trust game experiment. In the experiments we inform donors about the beliefs of the matched recipients, while eliciting these beliefs so as to maximize recipient honesty. The correlation between generous behavior and elicited beliefs is close to zero in all three experiments, suggesting that guilt aversion is smaller than previously thought.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:gamebe:v:68:y:2010:i:1:p:95-107
Journal Field
Theory
Author Count
4
Added to Database
2026-01-25