Title
Understanding the nature of the economic game ultimatum through the prism of personality traits
Abstract
Ultimatum game belongs to the classical economic experiments, frequently used to study altruism and pro-social behavior. The objective of the research is to understand relations between the personality and the ultimatum game from the responder´s perspective. Participants (N=224, females 62%) filled the web-based questionnaires on Hexaco-PI and hypothetic minimal acceptable sum as respondents in the ultimatum game. Data was analyzed by means of the structural equation model and the binominal regression model, using the narrow traits as input variables. Interestingly, the most frequented value of minimal acceptable amount was a fair offer (50 % of the total sum). A fair offer was expected by 50 % of females and 42 % of males; what erodes the traditional thesis of economic rationality, according to which any offer higher than 0 should be accepted. Hence, people have natural tendency to expect and require a fair deal. Results from the logit model show that the minimal acceptable sum in the ultimatum game is predicted, firstly, by liveliness and sociability (wider trait extraversion) and secondly, by sentimentality and dependence (wider trait emotionality). In other words, tendency to expect and require fair offer manifests at optimistic and joyful people able to create strong emotional connections. Logit model´s results were reconfirmed by the structural equation models, where wider traits extraversion and emotionality were found statistically significant. Findings have interesting implications as regards the understanding of underlying psychological processes in the frame of altruistic decision-making.
Keywords
Ultimatum game, Hexaco-PI, personality, in-class experiment, altruistic behavior
JEL classifications
D64 , C92
URI
http://jssidoi.org/jesi/article/840
DOI
Pages
571-583
Funding
This article is one of the partial outputs under the scientific research grant 042PU-4/2020 – KEGA - Implementation of innovative approaches and teaching materials in the educational process of future managers. This article is one of the partial outputs under the scientific research grant VEGA 1/0694/20 - Relational marketing research - the perception of e-commerce aspects and its impact on purchasing behaviour and consumer preferences and VEGA 1/0609/19 - Research on the development of electronic and mobile commerce in the aspect of the impact of modern technologies and mobile communication platforms on consumer behaviour and consumer preferences.This is an open access issue and all published articles are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License