Thesis
The impact of explicit culturally transmitted frames on economic decision making
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2017
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/106591
Abstract
Researchers have long theorized about cooperative behavior, often citing outcomes in experimental economic studies. Many of these studies have investigated the impact of framing effects on behavior in economic games such as the ultimatum game (UG), often using minimal framing cues (e.g., a manipulation involving a single sentence or word) that do not involve unambiguous offer expectations and generally result in small, unidirectional effects relative to the unframed UG. This study tests the hypothesis that in an UG explicitly framed as a prevalent Western economic institution – foreign currency exchange – participants will make and accept offers closely conforming to expectations associated with the institution (i.e., very small amounts allocated to bankers and large amounts to customers). This effect is predicted to emerge regardless of how labels, such as banker and customer, are applied to proposers and responders. Participants were recruited on Amazon Mturk and randomized into one of two conditions. In the control condition, participants played a standard UG. In the treatment condition, participants were given detailed instructions explicitly describing the frame and their roles as either customer or banker. As predicted, participants in the treatment condition frequently allocated large amounts to customers and small amounts to bankers, regardless of which roles were applied to the proposers and responders. This constitutes a novel, substantial and bidirectional divergence from modal offers in the standard UG (e.g., 40% offers to responders, 60% kept by proposers). The variation of offers in the treatment condition was also predicted to significantly decrease relative to the control condition, and this was not supported by the results. Possible reasons for this, along with future directions, are considered. The overall findings of this study support emerging experimental evidence suggesting that economic behavior is strongly subject to contextual influence. Based on this, it would seem that discussions about human cooperation must include considerations of cultural and institutional frames of reference.
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Details
- Title
- The impact of explicit culturally transmitted frames on economic decision making
- Creators
- Aaron David Lightner
- Contributors
- Edward H. Hagen (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Anthropology, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900525388901842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis