Friday, 12 October 2018: 2:40 PM
In this study we extend existing research on the relationship between cognitive performance measured by the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) and dictator game (DG) taking into account such factors as gender and declared religiosity. The main goals of this study are to find out if gender and declared religiosity affect altruistic behavior measured in DGs payoffs and if these factors are significant for CRT scores of dictators. In our investigation we asked 511 participants of the experiment (students in masters programs in an economics major) to respond to 4 types of Dictator Games and the CRT7 test. We applied correlations, descriptive statistics, student t-test, Mann-Whitney test and Tobit regression model. Our general results show that cognitive reflection was positively correlated with rational (selfish) behavior in DGs. Those dictators who scored high on the CRT (reflective dictators) kept more money for themselves than those who achieved lower scores on the CRT (altruistic, impulsive dictators). Our results confirm a distinct, inequity aversion attitude among altruistic, impulsive dictators and selfish, reflective dictators. We also find out that dictator’s payoff is significantly related to the gender and declared religiosity of the participants. In particular we point out that women behave more altruisticly then men and primarily belong to impulsive group of players. Also declared religiosity has statistical significance in the majority of DG payoffs. Similarly, rising declared religiosity goes along with diminishing payoffs. Parallely, dictators with high declared religiosity achieve lower scores on CRT. Summing up, women are more concerned about equal distribution of income than men (on average they share 30% more then men) and religious agents share 20% - 30% more than non-believers.
Keywords: cognitive reflection test, dictator game, rationality, gender, religiosity.