The benefit of the doubt: willful ignorance and altruistic punishment
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The benefit of the doubt: willful ignorance and altruistic punishment Robert Stüber1 Received: 19 December 2018 / Revised: 1 November 2019 / Accepted: 5 November 2019 © Economic Science Association 2019
Abstract Altruistic punishment is often thought to be a major enforcement mechanism of social norms. I present experimental results from a modified version of the dictator game with third-party punishment, in which third parties can remain ignorant about the choice of the dictator. I find that a substantial fraction of subjects choose not to reveal the dictator’s choice and not to punish the dictator. I show that this behavior is in line with the social norms that prevail in a situation of initial ignorance. Remaining ignorant and choosing not to punish is not inappropriate. As a result, altruistic punishment is significantly lower when the dictator’s choice is initially hidden. The decrease in altruistic punishment leads to more selfish dictator behavior only if dictators are explicitly informed about the effect of willful ignorance on punishment rates. Hence, in scenarios in which third parties can ignore information and dictators know what this implies, third-party punishment may only ineffectively enforce social norms. Keywords Third-party punishment · Willful ignorance · Sorting · Social preference JEL Classification C91 · D01 · D63 · D83
I am grateful to Philipp Albert, Kai Barron, Björn Bartling, Alexander Cappelen, Marvin Deversi, Urs Fischbacher, Zack Grossman, Rustamdjan Hakimov, Erin Krupka, Dorothea Kübler, Homayoon Moradi, Lisa Spantig, Kristina Strohmaier, Joël van der Weele, Justin Valasek, Roel van Veldhuizen and seminar participants at the ESA World Meeting 2018, the IMEBESS 2018, the SABE/IAREP 2018, the Lisbon Meeting in Economics and Political Science 2018, the theem 2019, and the Berlin Behavioral Economics Workshop for their helpful suggestions. I am also very thankful to Jennifer Rontganger for copy editing. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1068 3-019-09633-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Robert Stüber [email protected] 1
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1 Introduction A large and influential strand of literature shows that individuals are willing to punish other individuals if they violate social norms, even if the punishment comes at a monetary cost and yields no material gain (e.g., Fehr and Gächter 2000; Fehr and Fischbacher 2004; Carpenter 2007; Carpenter and Matthews 2012). Some of these studies show that this altruistic punishment of norm violations is even conducted by third parties, whose own economic payoff is unaffected by the norm violation. The willingness to altruistically punish norm violations has been suggested as being one major enforcement mechanism of social norms. In turn, social norms that are enforced by social sanctions are seen as a key driver of cooperation between strangers, individuals’ willin
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