L8: emotions and economic decision making: Cubitt et al. (2011)

Question 1

What did Cubitt et al. (2011) study?

Answer 1

They elicited emotional responses after subjects had played a PGG

Question 2

Explain the design of their paper?

Answer 2

2 conditions, standard PGG with and without punishment: subject groups = 3 members
One-shot PGG with an ADDITIONAL STAGE of emotional elicitation

Question 3

How does the punishment work?

Answer 3

Each member can assign up to 5 punishment points, is costly to the punisher (1 point) but has an effect of -2points on punishee

Question 4

What are the equations to calculate stage 1 and stage 2 income for members?

Answer 4

1) Income=(20-personal contribution)+0.5(total contributions)
2) Income=Income from stage 1-cost ofnegative points assigned-2(No.of punishment points assigned to you)

Question 5

How did the emotional elicitation stage work?

Answer 5

At the end of both games, an additional phase was added; subjects asked to indicate intensity of emotions towards actual contribution of each other group member
- They were given list of 13 emotions, and had to indicate (1-7 scale again) intensity of each emotion

Question 6

What emotions may subjects be likely to feel and WHY? (2)

Answer 6

• Anger: subject might feel angry if group member free rided (negative deviations from themselves) but should not feel angry if member contributed non-negative deviations (relative)
• Guilt: mirror of anger; may feel guilty when group member contributes more than them (+ve deviations) but shouldn’t feel guilty when member contributed same/less (non+ve dev.)

Question 7

2 main findings of the paper?

Answer 7

1) Anger strong if group member contributed less than them (v. weak if same or more than them)
2) No guilty feelings if subjects contributed as least as much as another member, feel some guilt if the member contributed more than them