On the interpretation of bribery in a laboratory corruption game: moral frames and social norms
On the interpretation of bribery in a laboratory corruption game: moral frames and social norms
复制标题
DOI：
10.1007/s10683-015-9436-1
复制
发表时间：
2016-03-01
影响因子：
2.3
通讯作者：
Banerjee, Ritwik
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Banerjee, Ritwik
过去对实验室腐败游戏的研究未能找到一致的证据表明受试者做出了“不道德”的决定。一个可能的原因，也是对实验室腐败游戏的批评，是该实验可能无法触发参与者心中预期的不道德框架，导致许多人质疑实验室腐败游戏存在的理由。为了验证这个想法，我们比较了骚扰贿赂游戏与策略相同但框架中立的最后通牒游戏中的行为。结果表明，无论是行贿人还是受贿人，在贿赂框架下的腐败行为都要少于非贿赂框架下的腐败行为，且前者的平均受贿金额也要少于后者。这表明道德成本确实在起作用。第三种处理方法，用中性语言重新标记贿赂博弈，表明观察到的处理效果不是来自最后通牒博弈的中性语言，而是来自贿赂和最后通牒博弈框架之间权利感的变化。为了进一步支持贿赂游戏确实衡量道德成本，我们在两个框架下引出了对行为或社会规范适当性的共同看法。我们发现，贿赂博弈框架和最后通牒博弈框架的社会规范确实是不同的，社会适当性的感知在决定两个框架中的实际行为中起着至关重要的作用。此外，仅仅用中性语言重新标记贿赂博弈，并不影响支配贿赂博弈的社会适当性规范，这表明，正如在实际行为的情况下一样，贿赂博弈和最后通牒博弈在社会适当性规范上的差异也来自于权利的差异。最后，我们对实验室腐败博弈中行为的外部有效性进行了评论。
Past studies on laboratory corruption games have not been able to find consistent evidence that subjects make "immoral'' decisions. A possible reason, and also a critique of laboratory corruption games, is that the experiment may fail to trigger the intended immorality frame in the minds of the participants, leading many to question the very raison d'etre of laboratory corruption games. To test this idea, we compare behavior in a harassment bribery game with a strategically identical but neutrally framed ultimatum game. The results show that fewer people, both as briber and bribee, engage in corruption in the bribery frame than in the alternative and the average bribe amount is lesser in the former than in the latter. These suggest that moral costs are indeed at work. A third treatment, which relabels the bribery game in neutral language, indicates that the observed treatment effect arises not from the neutral language of the ultimatum game but from a change in the sense of entitlement between the bribery and ultimatum game frames. To provide further support that the bribery game does measure moral costs, we elicit the shared perceptions of appropriateness of the actions or social norm, under the two frames. We show that the social norm governing the bribery game frame and ultimatum game frame are indeed different and that the perceived sense of social appropriateness plays a crucial role in determining the actual behavior in the two frames. Furthermore, merely relabelling the bribery game in neutral language makes no difference to the social appropriateness norm governing it. This indicates that, just as in the case of actual behavior, the observed difference in social appropriateness norm between bribery game and ultimatum game comes from the difference in entitlement too. Finally, we comment on the external validity of behavior in lab corruption games.