Motivated memory in dictator games

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Saucet, Charlotte; Villeval, Marie Claire
• 署名单位: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); CNRS - Institute for Humanities & Social Sciences (INSHS); Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon (ENS de LYON); Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1; Universite Jean Monnet; Universite Lyon 2; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon (ENS de LYON); Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1; Universite Jean Monnet; Universite Lyon 2; CNRS - Institute for Humanities & Social Sciences (INSHS); IZA Institute Labor Economics
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2019.05.011
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 250-275
• 关键词: Motivated memory; Selective recall; self-image; dictator game; experiment

摘要

The memory people have of their past behavior is one of the main sources of information about themselves. To study whether people retrieve their memory self-servingly in social encounters, we designed an experiment in which participants play binary dictator games and then have to recall the amounts allocated to the receivers. We find evidence of motivated memory through selective recalls: dictators remember more their altruistic than their selfish choices. A causal effect of the responsibility of decisions is identified, as the recall asymmetry disappears when options are selected randomly by the computer program. Incentivizing memory accuracy increases the percentage of dictators' correct recalls only when they behaved altruistically. In contrast, there is no clear evidence of motivated memory through biased memory errors, i.e., overly optimistic recalls: dictators recall selectively but do not bias the direction and magnitude of these recalls in a self-serving way. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.