Role-Reversal Consistency: An Experimental Study of the Golden Rule

TY - JOUR

T1 - Role-Reversal Consistency

T2 - An Experimental Study of the Golden Rule

AU - Costa-Gomes, Miguel

AU - Ju, Yuan

AU - Li, Jiawen

N1 - © 2018 Western Economic Association International. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2018/12/4

Y1 - 2018/12/4

N2 - We report an experiment that asks whether people in a strategic situation behave according to the Golden Rule, that is, do not treat others in ways that they find disagreeable to themselves, a property that we call role-reversal consistency. Overall, we find that over three quarters of the subjects are role-reversal consistent. Regression analysis suggests that this finding is not driven by players maximizing their subjective expected monetary earnings given their stated beliefs about their opponents' behavior. We find that subjects' stated beliefs and actions reveal mild projection bias. (JEL C78, C91).

AB - We report an experiment that asks whether people in a strategic situation behave according to the Golden Rule, that is, do not treat others in ways that they find disagreeable to themselves, a property that we call role-reversal consistency. Overall, we find that over three quarters of the subjects are role-reversal consistent. Regression analysis suggests that this finding is not driven by players maximizing their subjective expected monetary earnings given their stated beliefs about their opponents' behavior. We find that subjects' stated beliefs and actions reveal mild projection bias. (JEL C78, C91).

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85052798882&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/ecin.12708

DO - 10.1111/ecin.12708

M3 - Article

SN - 0095-2583

VL - 57

SP - 685

EP - 704

JO - Economic Inquiry

JF - Economic Inquiry

IS - 1

ER -