Individual Differences in Good Manners Rather Than Compassion Predict Fair Allocations of Wealth in the Dictator Game

Abstract

One of the most common tools for studying pro‐sociality is the dictator game, in which allocations to one's partner are often described in terms of altruism. However, the motivations driving these allocations may represent either emotional concern for others (compassion), adherence to social norms regarding fairness (politeness), or both. In this article, we apply personality psychology to the study of behavior in the dictator game, in which we examine the discriminant validity of distinct pro‐social constructs from the Big Five and HEXACO models in relation to allocations of wealth. Across four studies (Study 1: N = 192; Study 2: N = 212; Study 3: N = 304; Study 4: N = 90) utilizing both hypothetical and incentivized designs, we found that the politeness—but not compassion—aspect of Big Five Agreeableness, as well as HEXACO Honesty‐Humility, uniquely predicted dictator allocations within their respective personality models. These findings contribute to a growing literature indicating that the standard dictator game measures “good manners” or adherence to norms concerning fairness, rather than pure emotional concern or compassionate motives, and have important implications for how this paradigm is used and interpreted in psychological research.

Unique Associations Between Big Five Personality Aspects and Multiple Dimensions of Well‐Being

“…Studies across a range of areas have demonstrated the validity and utility of an aspect‐level analysis. Such studies reveal the differential relations that aspects within a domain have with threat processing (Cunningham, Arbuckle, Jahn, Mowrer, & Abduljalil, ), political ideology (Hirsh, DeYoung, Xu, & Peterson, ), fairness preferences (Zhao, Ferguson, & Smillie, ), and creative achievement in the arts and sciences (Kaufman et al, ). The aspects may similarly capture the key within‐domain divergences in predicting well‐being.…”

When Fair Is Not Equal

“…A substantial literature has highlighted the role of social norms, good manners, and individual differences in politeness in promoting prosocial behavior in economic games (Bolton et al, 1998;Camerer & Thaler, 1995;Guala & Mittone, 2010;Kimbrough & Vostroknutov, 2015;Zhao et al, 2016). However, the majority of these studies has concentrated on neutrally-framed games where there is an absence of contextual cues that guide real-world distributive decisions.…”

“…This allowed us to examine dictator decisions in situations where asymmetric distributions of wealth were normative and at odds with the equality norm. We were particularly interested in COMPASSION AND POLITENESS IN NORM-SALIENT DICTATOR GAMES 7 whether previous findings concerning the unique role of politeness (Zhao et al, 2016) would be replicated for dictator decisions when these were nested within equity and need norms.…”

“…For comparison with each of the norm-salient games, we included a similar-sized sample (N = 212; aged 18-57 years, Mage = 29.94, SD = 8.47; 59% female) from an existing MTurk dataset of a neutrally-framed standard dictator game, previously published in Zhao et al (2016). In this task, participants read a description of the standard dictator game (Forsythe et al, 1994;Kahneman et al, 1986) and were asked how they would divide 10 points (corresponding with dollar amounts) with a stranger that they would not knowingly meet.…”

“…Across four studies using both incentivized and hypothetical games, Zhao et al (2016) showed that only politeness was uniquely associated with greater allocations. At first, this may seem surprising and counterintuitive given the evidence linking compassion and empathic concern to lab and real-world prosocial behaviors (Batson, 1991;Bekkers, 2006;Eisenberg & Miller, 1987).…”