Can Priming Cooperation Increase Public Good Contributions?

Can Priming Cooperation Increase Public Good Contributions? Michalis Drouvelis Robert Metcalfe Nattavudh Powdthavee

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Can Priming Cooperation Increase Public Good Contributions? 2015 Theory and Decision 10.1007/s11238-015-9481-4 drouvelis2015-cooperation-priming drouvelis2015-cooperation-priming.txt, the project's staged copy 0fef382581968625602b15cbbd3a6ab03852de92 personal-copy behavioral-economics

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0 spans located by searching the stored text for the quote's exact words, allowing any whitespace between them existence Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. cooperative priming in a public goods game Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. behavioural-experiment behavioural-experiment Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms THE PRIME IS ARGUED TO WORK THROUGH PREFERENCES BECAUSE IT DEMONSTRABLY DID NOT WORK THROUGH BELIEFS - a null result carrying the mechanism claim: priming does not affect subjects' beliefs about other group members' contributions, INDICATING THAT PRIMING PRIMARILY SEEMS TO WORK BY CHANGING SUBJECTS' PREFERENCES ABOUT HOW MUCH TO CONTRIBUTE. The absent effect is the evidence, not a caveat about it Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms A ONE-SHOT GAME IS CHOSEN TO BUY A CLEAN CAUSE RATHER THAN A REALISTIC SETTING: the reason for choosing a one-shot interaction over repeated interactions is that we wanted to investigate THE PURE EFFECTS OF OUR PRIMING PROCESS, without these being confounded with STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS THAT MAY ARISE FROM REPEATED INTERACTION. The design gives up the question of persistence to isolate the question of existence, and says so Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms EXPOSURE TO THE PRIME IS GUARANTEED RATHER THAN ASSUMED, by handing out the puzzle's answers: Quotation withheld A subject who found none of the fifteen words still meets them Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms THE DEMAND-EFFECT OBJECTION IS ANSWERED BY ASKING THE SUBJECTS AND THEN CONTROLLING FOR THEIR ANSWER: NONE of the subjects in the non-priming treatment and 16 OUT OF 75 in the priming treatment said the first task had affected the second, and with a dummy for those subjects the priming coefficient stays significant for contributions and insignificant for beliefs. The control is reported with its own numbers rather than asserted Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Only a one-shot game was run, so nothing can be said about whether the priming effect persists over repeated decisions. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The result does not generalise beyond the public goods game to other economically relevant behaviours. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. A single priming method (word-and-association semantic priming) was used, so the effect of other priming modes, including negative priming, is unknown. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Beliefs were elicited after contribution decisions, making the belief measure endogenous to the behaviour it was meant to explain. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The priming manipulation is open to an experimenter demand interpretation, which the authors could only address post hoc with a questionnaire control. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. a post-experimental questionnaire asked subjects outright whether they thought the priming task had affected their decisions eliminates: that subjects saw through the priming manipulation and responded to what they believed the experimenter wanted · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. belief elicitation was deliberately NOT incentivised eliminates: that paying for beliefs introduces an income effect which would confound the emotions being elicited · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. the puzzle solutions were handed out at the end of the allotted time eliminates: that a subject who failed to solve the puzzle was never primed at all, leaving the treatment group only partly treated · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. framing framing Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. anchoring anchoring Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. cooperative priming cooperative priming Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. contributions contributions Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. free riding free riding Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. beliefs beliefs Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. preferences preferences Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. word-search puzzle word-search puzzle Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. priming - taken by these authors from psychology in a FORMAL definition and then used in economics: previously activated information impacting the processing of subsequent information. The definition is procedural, which is why it can be transplanted across fields Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. priming, as distinguished from framing and anchoring - the distinction is drawn on WHAT IS LEFT UNTOUCHED: priming reinforces a pathway to a stimulus without re-describing the decision problem, whereas framing re-describes an equivalent problem and anchoring redirects attention Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. cooperative priming, as delivered here - fifteen of the twenty hidden words carry the concept and five are neutral in both conditions, so the two treatments differ only in the fifteen. The construct is a WORD LIST, chosen by pre-test rating Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. beliefs about others’ contributions - measured, unincentivised, and elicited AFTER the contribution decision, which the authors say makes them endogenous to the thing they are meant to explain Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. extends → public goods experiments on explicit cooperation-fostering mechanisms (Fehr and Gächter 2000, 2002; Sefton et al. 2007; Isaac and Walker 1988; Bochet et al. 2006) Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. extends → economic priming studies of religious identity, social outlook and social identity (Benjamin et al. 2010a, b; McKay et al. 2010; Atlas and Putterman 2011; Cappelen and Drange Hole 2011) Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. contradicts → other-regarding preference models (Fehr and Schmidt 1999; Bolton and Ockenfels 2000) Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. priming —distinct-from→ framing priming framing differs in: WHETHER THE DECISION PROBLEM IS RE-DESCRIBED: framing restates a logically equivalent problem in a different light; priming leaves the problem alone and reinforces a pathway to a concept · strength of the relation: 0.95 · note: A boundary drawn by the authors in their own voice, not inferred by us - the sentence exists only to separate the three terms. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. priming —distinct-from→ anchoring priming anchoring differs in: WHAT IS REDIRECTED: anchoring fixes the decision-maker's attention on a single trait or piece of information, leaving the problem and the concepts alone; priming reinforces a pathway to a concept without directing attention to it · strength of the relation: 0.95 · note: The second half of the same distinction, and the sentence defines both neighbours in one breath - framing by re-description, anchoring by attention. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. cooperative priming —causes→ contributions cooperative priming contributions direction on the measure: increases · strength of the relation: 0.9 · note: The headline result, in the abstract's own words. Averages are 4.99 tokens neutral against 7.17 primed, one-sided Mann-Whitney p = 0.044. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. priming —causes→ free riding priming free riding direction on the measure: reduces · strength of the relation: 0.85 · note: The same result stated as a reduction rather than an increase. Kept as its own edge because free riding is the behaviour the incentives reward, and it is the endpoint an economist would search on. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. priming —causes→ beliefs priming beliefs direction on the measure: no-change · strength of the relation: 0.1 — the record marks this weak · note: THE LOAD-BEARING NULL. This absence is what licenses the preferences claim in the same sentence, so it is not a caveat - remove it and the mechanism has no support. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. priming —causes→ preferences priming preferences strength of the relation: 0.8 · note: Weighted below the contribution effect because it is an INFERENCE FROM THE BELIEF NULL rather than a measurement - preferences were never observed directly, which is also why this edge carries no effect direction. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. priming —operationalised-as→ word-search puzzle priming word-search puzzle strength of the relation: 0.95 · note: The whole construct is fifteen words hidden in a 16x16 letter matrix, self-completed, with the same five neutral words present in both conditions. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. an 11-percentage-point increase in giving (approx. 25% to 36% of endowment) Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. 150 participants, 75 per treatment Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. cooperative priming raises contributions in a one-shot public goods game Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. primed group contributed 7.17 tokens on average vs 4.99 for the neutrally-primed group Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. standard economic theory predicts priming should have no impact on choices Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. priming manipulation priming manipulation Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. priming priming Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. null-hypothesis null-hypothesis Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. p-value p-value Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Mann-Whitney Mann-Whitney Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution.

The full text of this article is not redistributable, so it is not included here. The evidence sentences are withheld with it; the tag layer and its grounding status remain. The article itself is at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-015-9481-4.