Abstract

SILVA, Fanny Silveira e  and  FERREIRA, Diogo Conque Seco. Decision making in the sharing game: an exploratory study on the effect of contextual variables. Temas psicol. [online]. 2015, vol.23, n.4, pp. 1061-1075. ISSN 1413-389X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.9788/TP2015.4-19.

The Sharing Game, an economic game, studies the motivations involved in resources allocation. The participant faces several trials in which he must choose between two options, both with an amount of resources for him and for other passive participant. On these two options, the difference between the participants' resources is always the same, but in one of them - optimal option - the distributor receives more and the receiver even more, and in another - non optimal option - the distributor receives less and the other even less. From their choice, participants may be classified as optimizers, egalitarians or competitives. The objective of this study was to provide different contexts for the Sharing Game and investigate their effects. Seven conditions (n=233) were conducted with university students recruited by convenience. Conditions involved gain and loss of resource, real and hypothetical money, distribution of time and prior information about the receiver. The percentage of optimal choices in each condition was calculated and the participants were classified into one of those three categories accordingly. In all conditions, most choices of the distributor balanced their resources with the receiver. In conditions where the receiver has already started the game with points, there was a higher frequency of competitive choices. The frequency of optimal choices was higher in the condition Sharing Real Money. The egalitarian choices were more frequent in the condition Sharing Time to perform a Tedious Task. Variations in the choices distribution demonstrate that the Sharing Game is sensitive to the situation in which it is played.

Keywords : Decision making; Sharing Game; economic game; contextual variables.

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