1. |
- Bergh, Andreas, et al.
(författare)
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Mine or ours? Unintended framing effects in dictator games
- 2022
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 34:1, s. 78-95
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper reports results from a classroom dictator game comparing the effects of three different sets of standard instructions. The results show that seemingly small and typically unreported differences in standard instructions induce different perceptions regarding entitlement and ownership of the money to be distributed, and that these perceptions influence behaviour. Less is given when the task is described as a task of generosity and more when the task is a task of distribution (average 35% vs. 52%). The results can contribute to explaining the large variation in dictator game giving reported in the literature and show that even small and unreported differences in instructions change how the game is perceived. JEL codes: C70; C91; D63
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2. |
- Bjuggren Andersson, Anton, 1986-, et al.
(författare)
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Are upper-secondary track decisions risky? Evidence from Sweden on the assumptions of risk-aversion models
- 2023
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 35:3, s. 311-337
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Relative risk aversion (RRA) models explain social class inequalities in education with risk avoidance, i.e., the risky choice assumption (RCA). This assumption concerns risks related to more ambitious educational choices and has been subject to little explicit scrutiny. In this paper, we test whether or not vocational education is a safety net that protects from labor market marginalization. We present an empirical assessment of upper-secondary track choices in Sweden, contrasting the vocational and the academic tracks for those not pursuing tertiary educational degrees. We use Swedish administrative data for all siblings born 1972–1980 and fit sibling fixed effects models netting out unobserved time-constant confounders. The only evidence in favor of the RCA is that when considering selection, graduates of the academic track without a tertiary degree initially face higher risks of not being stably employed and registered as unemployed in their early 20s than their counterparts from vocational education. However, the academic tracks significantly protect men from the threat of entering unskilled routine occupations. We conclude that the support for the RCA is scant at best.
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3. |
- Bravo, Giangiacomo
(författare)
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Agents’ beliefs and the evolution of institutions for common-pool resource management
- 2011
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 23:1, s. 117-152
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The joint exploitation of open-access natural resources is often modeled as a social dilemma with no escape for rational actors. Nevertheless, real individuals are not helplessly trapped in this dilemma and are often able to sustainably manage their commons by building endogenous institutions. This paper proposes both a simple analytical model and a more complex agent-based one designed to study common-pool resource management problems with a specific focus on the relation between agents’ beliefs and institutions. The conditions where agents are allowed to build management institutions lead to much better outcomes than the ones where agents can only rely on individual beliefs in order to limit the resource consumption. This happens despite the fact that agents act in a competitive environment favoring high resource consumers.
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4. |
- Bravo, Giangiacomo, et al.
(författare)
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The evolution of trust in non-simultaneous exchange situations
- 2008
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 20:1, s. 85-113
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Trust is an important concept that intersects a number of different disciplines, including economics, sociology, and political science, and maintains some meaning even in the natural sciences. Any situation where non-simultaneous exchanges between living organisms take place involves a problem of trust. We used computer simulations to study the evolution of trust in non-simultaneous exchange situations formalized by means of a Trust game. We found that trust and reciprocity-based cooperation are likely to emerge only when agents have the possibility of building trustworthy reputations and when the information regarding agents’ past behaviors is sufficiently spread in the system. Both direct and indirect reciprocity play a role in fostering cooperation. However, the strength of the latter is greater under most of the examined conditions. In general, our findings are consistent with theories arguing for a positive feedback relationship between trust, reputation, and reciprocity, leading together to higher levels of cooperation.
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5. |
- DellaPosta, Daniel, et al.
(författare)
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Endogenous Dynamics of Institutional Change
- 2017
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 1461-7358 .- 1043-4631. ; 29:1, s. 5-48
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A parsimonious set of mechanisms explains how and under which conditions behavioral deviations build into cascades that reshape institutional frameworks from the bottom up, even if institutional innovations initially conflict with the legally codified rules of the game. Specifically, we argue that this type of endogenous institutional change emerges from an interplay between three factors: the utility gain agents associate with decoupling from institutional equilibria, positive externalities derived from similar decoupling among one’s neighbors, and accommodation by state actors. Where endogenous institutional change driven by societal action is sufficiently robust, it can induce political actors to accommodate and eventually to legitimize institutional innovations from below. We provide empirical illustrations of our theory in two disparate institutional contexts—the rise of private manufacturing in the Yangzi delta region of China since 1978, focusing on two municipalities in that region, and the diffusion of gay bars in San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s. We validate our theory with an agent-based simulation.
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6. |
- Denrell, Jerker
(författare)
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Radical organization theory : An incomplete contract approach to power and organizational design
- 2000
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Ingår i: Rationality and society. - : Sage Publications Ltd. - 1461-7358 .- 1043-4631. ; 12:1, s. 39-66
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A typical argument in Marxist and radical writings on economic organization is that prevailing practices, rather than being the most efficient, have been adopted in order to increase the share of the surplus of capitalists. Using an incomplete contract approach, this article develops a model which demonstrates how and when adopting an inferior economic organization could be profit maximizing.
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7. |
- Ekman, Mats
(författare)
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Buildings and Welfare
- 2022
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : Sage Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 34:4, s. 526-547
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- If welfare stigma depends upon social attitudes, only the neediest apply for welfare when they can more easily be seen to do so. Using GoogleMaps' 'StreetView' feature, this article finds that the approval rate of applications for social assistance is higher in welfare offices with building characteristics that enhance the visibility of entry. A fitting explanation for this finding is that persons looking for social assistance dislike being thought of as 'welfare cases', and apply more conservatively when others can see it. The effects decline in the rate of poverty, suggesting that the self-reliance norm weakens as poverty increases.
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8. |
- Ekman, Mats
(författare)
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Puzzling evidence on voter turnout
- 2017
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : Sage Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 29:4, s. 449-470
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this empirical analysis of voting patterns in five countries on days when one or more national referenda were held, voter turnout appears to decline in the number of concurrent referenda, in contrast to standard theories' predictions and regardless of method used to hold constant the quality of the referenda. Multiple concurrent referenda imply quantity discounts' as one may vote on more ballots in one visit to the polling station. They should also draw more voters due to the wider range of interests attracted when more issues are up for vote. Yet, none of this seems to happen in the data. More recent developments, such as rule utilitarian and information-based theories of voting, fare similarly poorly in light of the evidence presented in this article; a social theory of voting does better.
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9. |
- Ellingsen, Tore, et al.
(författare)
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Does impartial deliberation breed fair behavior? : An experimental test
- 2005
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Ingår i: Rationality and society. - : Sage. - 1461-7358 .- 1043-4631. ; 17:1, s. 116-136
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We experimentally test whether impartial deliberation leads to stronger concern for fairness in bargaining. In the experiment a seller can invest some of his/her time in order to generate potential gains from trade with a buyer. Conditional on investment the seller proposes how to split the gain. The buyer either accepts or rejects the seller's offer. To vary the degree of impartiality, subjects are assigned to their roles as sellers or buyers either before (the 'subjective group') or after (the 'objective group') they read the instructions. We find that the relationship between the perceived investment cost and the bargaining proposal is significantly stronger in the objective group. This suggests that sellers in the objective group are more preoccupied with setting a fair price.
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10. |
- Eriksson, Lina, 1976
(författare)
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Rational reconstructions and the question of function
- 2019
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 31:4, s. 409-431
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Social norm emergence is commonly explained by stating that norms serve certain functions - for example, solving cooperation or coordination problems. But critics argue that examples of norms that do not seem to serve functions show that functions cannot explain social norms. However, both sides tend to make assumptions about how explanations of social norms in terms of functions would work. By discussing four problems for these assumptions, I will show that they are over-simplified. Instead of asking whether norms serve functions, we need to ask more specific questions about the relationship between the norm and the function it supposedly serves.
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11. |
- Frank, Kenneth A., et al.
(författare)
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The market dynamics of socially embedded trading
- 2020
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE Publications (UK and US). - 1461-7358 .- 1043-4631. ; 31:2, s. 152-181
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Social embeddedness has provided a compelling challenge to neoclassical descriptions of markets. Nevertheless, without a corresponding description of the micro-social forces that counter embeddedness, the description of embeddedness is essentially static, and does not integrate the dual forces of embeddedness and markets. In this study, we identify a sociological force counter to embeddedness residing in third parties whose presence may interrupt socially embedded informal trading partnerships. Using data from the Helsinki Stock Exchange in 1996-1997, we confirm that stock trades are socially embedded in partnerships in which trading persists from week to week and in which prices deviate from immediate trading prices. Importantly, we find that trading partnerships are more likely to be interrupted when prices deviate from immediate trading prices and when third parties are present who trade with one or both members of the partnership. Thus, third parties are a critical sociological force in the embeddedness-market dynamic.
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12. |
- Funcke, Alexander, 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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Partial participation towards collective action : To stifle or instigate
- 2016
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 28:4, s. 453-467
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper we extend the Granovetter threshold model with partial participation towards a collective action. That is, agents may partake by conducting an action that is less costly than the ultimate collective action, but costly enough to signal a commitment to the cause. We show that it is not just the exact distribution of thresholds, but also the distribution of available actions that determines whether a collective action will be achieved. We suggest and prove propositions for how both an inventive “activist” and a “dictator” may strategically change the signaling value of existing actions, or introduce new ones, in order to either instigate or stifle collective action. Applying the theory to revolutions, we argue that new technology can play a role beyond that of communication and synchronization, viz. that of adding modes of partial, less arduous, participation.
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13. |
- Hjorth-Trolle, Anders
(författare)
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Beliefs, parental investments, and intergenerational persistence: A formal model
- 2018
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 30:1, s. 108-154
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Empirical research documents persistent socioeconomic and race gaps in parental investments in children. This article presents a formal model that describes the process through which parents beliefs about the returns on investments in children evolve over time in light of new information that they receive regarding the outcomes of past investments. The model, which is based on Bayesian learning, accounts for how parents of low socioeconomic status may come to underinvest in their children because they have false low beliefs about the returns on investments. Moreover, the model describes how beliefs are transmitted across generations, thus creating dynasties of underinvesting parents who reproduce inequalities in childrens socioeconomic outcomes. Finally, this article uses National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data to provide illustrative empirical evidence on key aspects of the proposed model. The main contribution of this article is to integrate parents beliefs about returns on investments into existing models of intergenerational transmissions.
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14. |
- Kirgil, Zeynep Melis, 1993-, et al.
(författare)
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Cooperation sustainability in small groups : Exogenous and endogenous dynamics of the sustainability of cooperation
- 2024
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 36:1, s. 93-121
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cooperation sustainability presents a complex social phenomenon. Two common approaches have been used to study the sustainability of cooperation in small groups: endogenous processes (dynamic) and exogenous factors (static approaches). The present study integrates existing research by investigating how the interplay between exogenous and endogenous conditions affects cooperation in small groups. To uncover endogenous group dynamics in an online Public Goods experiment (n = 353), we performed multilevel latent Markov models on Bayesian estimation that allowed us to estimate latent classes on the level of rounds, individuals, and groups. We studied exogenous factors by investigating the effects of situational tightness versus looseness, and monetary versus symbolic frames on cooperation sustainability. Our key findings show that both endogenous and exogenous factors are critical to explain the variation of cooperation sustainability between groups. Second, groups exposed to tight situations reveal higher levels of cooperation sustainability than groups exposed to loose situations. Money primes did not have an impact. Among the control variables, collective intentionality showed the strongest association with cooperation. Future research may develop a more sophisticated measure of tight versus loose situations and examine the causal relationship between collective intentionality and cooperation.
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15. |
- Olsson-Yaouzis, Nicolas
(författare)
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Revolutionaries, despots, and rationality
- 2010
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 22:3, s. 283-299
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The role of groups has often been invoked as an explanation of how successful revolutions can be the outcome of rational action. This paper attempts to show that the focus on groups fails to incorporate an important aspect of oppression, namely the oppressive regime itself. If rational choice theory is to be taken seriously and if it is assumed that the potential revolutionaries are rational, then similar assumptions should be made about the despot. If this is done, then it is far from obvious that groups help to solve the free-rider problem. Rather it is shown that in this case the revolutionaries become subject to a higher order free-rider problem.
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16. |
- Oskarsson, Sven, et al.
(författare)
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Power, trust, and institutional constraints : individual level evidence
- 2009
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 21:2, s. 171-195
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article focuses on how institutions matter in generating relationships of trust in an environment of unequal power. Trust is seen as the truster’s expectation that the trustee will act trustworthily out of moral commitment and/or interest in continuing the relationship. Using cross-sectional data from a survey conducted in 2006 on Swedish employment relations the authors show that perceived power asymmetries between an employee and his/her superior have a negative impact on trust. However, perceptions about the enforcement and fairness of institutional constraints – rules for dismissals, conflict resolution, wage setting, and promotion – have conditioning effects. When the respondents conceive the rules as fair, trust is less influenced by increasing power asymmetries between an employee and his/her superior. The results have important implications. By designing institutions that are considered fair, distrust may be mitigated even in situations characterized by extensive power asymmetries.
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17. |
- Simpson, Brent, et al.
(författare)
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The dynamics of contracts and generalized trustworthiness
- 2009
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 21:1, s. 59-80
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Generalized trust, or trust in strangers, has been traced to a wide range of societal benefits. But generalized trust is not sustainable in the absence of widespread generalized trustworthiness, that is, the tendency for strangers to honor trust extended to them. While there has been much work on the origins and consequences of generalized trust, surprisingly little research has addressed the antecedents of generalized trustworthiness. We argue that generalized trustworthiness is negatively affected by prior exposure to a ubiquitous extrinsic motivator of trustworthy behavior, contracts. Specifically, drawing on classic social psychological research on the overjustification effect, we argue that actors previously constrained by contracts will attribute their own ‘trustworthy’ behavior in those interactions to the contract itself. According to overjustification arguments, this misattribution should lead to a decrease in intrinsic motivations to act trustworthily in interactions where the actor is not constrained by the contract. Results of a new experiment support this argument.
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18. |
- Toelstede, Bjorn
(författare)
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How path-creating mechanisms and structural lock-ins make societies drift from democracy to authoritarianism
- 2019
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 31:2, s. 233-262
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The question of how societies move between democracy and authoritarianism is of vital interest in science, as well as in the day-to-day political debate. This article contributes to this debate by exploring which mechanisms potentially encourage societies to move from democracy to authoritarianism. This article is based on the idea of traditional path dependence, tracing back to Arthur and the organizational path dependence theory by Sydow et al. Building on these theories, I examine how the so-called path-creating mechanisms can emerge and influence societies to move from democracy to authoritarianism. I develop two new concepts in this article. First, structural lock-in that describes a society deprived of its capabilities to adapt to the continuously changing environment. Second, efficient statism, describing societies which strive for higher socio-economic efficiency by embracing strong governmental forms and high conformity levels. The empirical cases presented in this article show that the path-creating mechanisms and efficient statism are regularly observable in societies. Such mechanisms put democracy at risk.
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19. |
- Toelstede, Björn
(författare)
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Social hierarchies in democracies and authoritarianism : The balance between power asymmetries and principal-agent chains
- 2020
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : Sage Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 32:3, s. 334-366
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Social hierarchies exist in democracies as well as in authoritarian societies. However, their nature is different. Democratic hierarchies are built bottom-up through election while autocratic hierarchies are built top-down through domination. Both, however, have power asymmetries between the weaker citizens and the stronger politicians, which are amplified the stronger the hierarchies are. This manuscript introduces a model that combines pro-/anti-social behavior with different degrees of hierarchies. It is argued that this model has the power to categorize countries according to these criteria and indicate when and how societies move between democracy and authoritarianism. Importantly, I illustrate that the balance between power asymmetries and principal-agent chains is key for understanding when and why democracies sometimes transcend into authoritarianism.
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20. |
- Winter, F., et al.
(författare)
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You are who your friends are? An experiment on homophily in trustworthiness among friends
- 2020
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 1043-4631 .- 1461-7358. ; 32:2, s. 223-251
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We study the existence of homophily (i.e. the tendency for people to be friends with people who are similar to themselves) with respect to trustworthiness. We ask whether two friends show similarly trustworthy behavior toward strangers, and whether such behavior is expected by a third party. We develop a simple model of Bayesian learning in trust games and test the derived hypotheses in a controlled laboratory environment. In the experiment, two trustees sequentially play a trust game with the same trustor, where the trustees depending on treatment are either friends or strangers to each other. We confirm the existence of homophily with respect to trustworthiness. The trustors' beliefs about the trustees' trustfulness are not affected by the knowledge about the (non-)existent friendship between the trustees. Behaviorally, however, they indirectly reciprocate the (un-)trustworthy behavior of one trustee toward his or her friends in later interactions.
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21. |
- Rothstein, Bo, 1954, et al.
(författare)
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Political Corruption and Social Trust - An Experimental Approach
- 2009
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Ingår i: Rationality and Society. - 1043-4631. ; 21:1, s. 81-112
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The main question addressed in this paper is how the great variation in the level of social trust in different countries can be explained. Most empirical research on this question has been based on survey data which has limitations when it comes to capturing the causal mechanisms. Building on theories that point to the importance of trustworthy governmental institutions for creating social trust, two parallel experiments were conducted in two countries where the levels of corruption and social trust are very different. One group of 64 Swedish and one group of 82 Romanian undergraduate students responded to a number of scenarios which describe situations at a police station or a doctor's surgery in a foreign country. In the scenarios, the person tries to receive immediate assistance from the police/doctor at the same time as another person who lives in the `unknown' country. These encounters varied within groups in terms of (1) whether or not a bribe was used in order to receive immediate assistance, (2) whether the other person or the official took the initiative to request/offer immediate assistance in exchange for the bribe, and (3) outcome in terms of whether immediate assistance was approved or declined as a result of the offer or demand for a bribe. Type of authority (police vs. doctor) was a between-groups factor. Subsequent to each scenario, participants' levels of various aspects of vertical and horizontal trust were measured. As hypothesized, the Romanian sample had reliably lower initial levels of horizontal trust than the Swedish sample. For both samples, however, the results showed the expected effects of bribe, initiator, and outcome on all dependent trust measures. The results supported the hypothesis that trust in authorities influences the perceptions of the trustworthiness of others in general. Even though some of the effects were stronger for one sample than for the other, the influence of vertical trust on social trust was true for both the high- and the low-trusting sample.
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