The Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) scale is a popular tool to measure interpersonal closeness that is increasingly being used in economics.
We develop and validate a continuous version of the IOS scale.
This Continuous IOS scale gives a finer measure and addresses the reluctance of subjects to report low scores on the standard IOS scale.
We also propose a version of the standard IOS scale that meets its original design features.
Our IOS scales are easy-to-use, well-documented, standardised, and available at https://github.com/geoffreycastillo/ios-js.
A common finding of the literature on dishonesty is that groups are more dishonest than individuals.
We revisit this finding by replacing the experimenter, implicitly hurt by subjects’ dishonesty, with an explicit third-party: a local charity.
With the charity we do not find groups to be more dishonest than individuals.
Instead, groups can even help moderate the extent of the dishonesty.
Preference reversals between choice and valuation are typically studied with probabilities or with time delays.
I extend them to social distances and document their existence in this new domain.
The attraction effect violates choice consistency, one of the central assumptions of economics.
I present a risky choice experiment to test it and disentangle some of its explanations.
I find the attraction effect, but in a smaller magnitude than previously thought.
I uncover a ‘range effect’ that shows that people weight more attributes whose range increases.
I also show that the aggregate results hide considerable heterogeneity between subjects.
Altruism is typically assumed to decline with social distance.
We test this assumption by estimating the shape of individual social discount functions.
In two experiments, we manipulate social distance continuously by matching subjects with recipients who vary in how many demographic characteristics are shared between them.
While many subjects are social discounters and favour closer recipients, we find that a quarter to a third of subjects are ‘social magnifiers’ and favour more distant ones.
Considering choices between $1 for a distant recipient and money for themselves, our estimates imply that social discounters would accept a discount of $0.24 to have it redirected to themselves, while social magnifiers would require a premium of $0.11.
Social discounting and magnification remain after taking self bias into account.
We further find that many subjects have non-monotone preferences.
This paper introduces the Virtual Bingo Blower (VBB), an open-source tool to generate risk and ambiguity in computerized experiments.
Using a physics engine—a computer simulation of a physical system—the VBB simulates a conventional bingo blower.
Different aspects of the VBB, such as the number of balls, their colour, and their speed, can be easily modified.
In an online experiment, we measure ambiguity attitudes and vary the source of ambiguity, using either the VBB or natural events.
We find that the VBB and natural events result in a similar degree of ambiguity aversion.
Further, we find that, by manipulating the number of balls, the VBB can be used to manipulate the perceived level of ambiguity.
In a risk preference elicitation experiment, we manipulate the way we represent lotteries.
We represent probabilities, payoffs, or both at the same time.
We find that the representation has no effect on the raw, elicited certainty equivalents.
We find, however, a significant effect on the structural parameters estimated via maximum likelihood.
If the Krupka-Weber (2013) norm-elicitation task captures pre-existing social norms, then the elicited norms should be independent of one’s role in a game or one’s social preferences.
We test this idea in a complex game that features rich interactions.
We find that different people, even when they have conflicting incentives, report the same social norms.
Our results further validate the use of the Krupka-Weber task to measure social norms.
