Keeping others in our mind or in our heart? Distribution games under cognitive load

摘要

It has recently been argued that giving is spontaneous while greed is calculated (Rand et al. 2012). If greed is calculated we would expect that cognitive load, which is assumed to reducethe influence of cognitive processes, should affect greed. In this paper we study bothcharitable giving and the behavior of dictators under high and low cognitive load, to test ifgreed is affected by the load. In the dictator games we use both a give frame, where thedictators are given an amount that they may share with a partner, and a take frame, wheredictators may take from an amount initially allocated to the partner. The results showconsistently that the behavioral effect in terms of allocated money of the induced load is small if at all existent. At the same time, follow-up questions indicate that the subjects’ decisions are more driven by their feelings and less driven by their thoughts under cognitive load.