Coordination with third-party externalities

Third-party manipulation of conflict: an experiment

“…If third party messages have no strategic content (as observed in our data), the presence of the third party in our experiment can be thought of as an externality that affects subjects through social preferences. Consistent with the findings of Bland and Nikiforakis (2015), we find that this externality does not affect subjects' behavior in the direction predicted by social preferences in the case where the active players' incentives are misaligned with those of the third party (the provocateur). However, unlike the third party in Bland and Nikiforakis (2015), the third party in our experiment is active rather than passive.…”

“…Consistent with the findings of Bland and Nikiforakis (2015), we find that this externality does not affect subjects' behavior in the direction predicted by social preferences in the case where the active players' incentives are misaligned with those of the third party (the provocateur). However, unlike the third party in Bland and Nikiforakis (2015), the third party in our experiment is active rather than passive. Moreover, the third parties in our experiment affected subjects' behavior by virtue of their messages and not simply their presence.…”

“…We call this the strategic communication hypothesis. If the conflicting parties care about the payoffs of the third party, its mere presence could make their behavior more or less hawkish independent of message content (e.g., Bland and Nikiforakis, 2015). We refer to this as the third party social preferences hypothesis.…”

“…In these papers, recommendations are made by the experimenter whose incentives may be unknown to the subjects, while the main ingredient of our experiment is strategic recommendations by a third player with a commonly known bias. Bland and Nikiforakis (2015) study how third party externalities affect behavior in a two player coordination game. If third party messages have no strategic content (as observed in our data), the presence of the third party in our experiment can be thought of as an externality that affects subjects through social preferences.…”

Sharing responsibility with a machine

“…ird, the ingroup-favouring norm could put some pressure on decision makers to behave in a way which bene ts the group before taking 3 is has been shown in a number of experimental games such as the Trust Game (Kugler et al, 2007), the Ultimatum Game (Bornstein and Yaniv, 1998), the Coordination Game (Bland and Nikiforakis, 2015), the Signaling Game (Cooper and Kagel, 2005), the Prisoners Dilemma (McGlynn et al, 2009), the Gi Exchange Game , the Public Good Games (Andreoni and Petrie, 2004) as well as in lo eries (Rockenbach et al, 2007) and Beauty Contests (Kocher and Su er, 2005;Su er, 2005). 4 Bland and Nikiforakis (2015) study a coordination game with third party externalities and nd sel sh behaviour among the joint decision makers even when the sel sh option imposes a strong negative externality on a third-party. 5 For an overview on the so called bystander-e ect see Fischer et al (2011). into account the interests of others.…”