Psychological ownership, group affiliation and other-regarding behaviour: Some evidence from dictator games

Abstract

We find that dictator giving is higher in group environments, where the dictator and recipient share a common group affiliation, and the funds are group-owned, than in the benchmark individual environment, where the dictator and recipient do not share a group affiliation, and the funds are owned by the dictator. A move to the group environment from the individual environment involves two distinct shifts: one, a shift in affiliation, where the dictator gives to a group member, rather than just a randomly matched partner out of his own fund, and, two, a shift in ownership, where the dictator gives out of group-owned rather than personal funds, in either case to a group member. We implemented these two shifts through linguistic framing of instructions. Our results show that,although simple group framing does lead to a somewhat higher give rate, group framing combined with joint psychological ownership of the endowment leads to significantly higher average offers in the dictator game.