Norms Make Preferences Social∗
نویسندگان
چکیده
We explore the idea that prosocial behavior in laboratory games is driven by social norms imported into the laboratory. Under this view, heterogeneity in behavior across subjects is driven by heterogeneity in sensitivity to social norms. We introduce an incentivized method of eliciting individual norm-sensitivity, and we show how it relates to play in public goods, trust, dictator and ultimatum games. We show how our observations can be rationalized in a stylized model of norm-dependent preferences under reasonable assumptions about the nature of social norms, and then we directly elicit norms in our games to test the robustness of our interpretation. JEL classifications: C91, C92, D03
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