Economic Games

This section is organized by the name of the games.

Dictator Game is a measure of prosociality through behavior. The dictator game is composed of two players, the “Dictator” (referred to in the study as the “Decider”) and “Receiver.” The Dictator is given a pool of resources (e.g., $8). His or her task is to decide how much, if any, of this pool of resources to pass on to the Receiver used the same game.

• Modified versions of the game are available for the study of e.g., gender
• Simpson, B. & Willer, R. (2008). Altruism and indirect reciprocity: The interaction of person and situation in prosocial behavior. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71S, 37-52. doi:10.1177/019027250807100106.

The Redistribution Game is an altruism behavior task. This economic decision-making task models both unfair treatment of a victim and costly redistribution of funds to the victim.

• Weng, H., Fox, A., Shackman, A., Stodola, D., Caldwell, J., Olson, M., Rogers, G., & Davidson, R. (2013). Compassion training alters altruism and neural responses to suffering. Psychological Science, 24(7), 1171-1180. 

The Zurich Prosocial Game (ZPG) allows for repeated, ecologically valid assessment of prosocial behavior and is sensitive to the influence of reciprocity, helping cost, and distress cues on helping behavior.

• Leiberg, S., Klimecki, O., & Singer, T. (2011). Short-term compassion training increases prosocial behavior in a newly developed prosocial game. PloS one, 6(3), e17798.