The evidence
The dictator game: what people give when nobody can refuse
You decide how to split a sum with a stranger, and the stranger has no say. Nothing forces you to give anything.
The dictator game
When the other side cannot refuse, a purely self-interested person gives nothing. Most people give something.
What the study found
A 2011 meta-study of 616 treatments in 131 papers found that dictators gave 28% of the money on average. In the pooled individual decisions (20,813), 36% gave nothing, 17% split it equally and 5% gave everything.
Source: Engel, C. (2011). Dictator games: A meta study. Experimental Economics 14(4), 583-610. doi.org/10.1007/s10683-011-9283-7
How to read this
These are the answers of particular people, asked in a particular way, at a particular time. A share of people is not a verdict: it tells you what they answered, not what is right.
Where the game asks it
The Distribution (What does fairness require?). The game’s versions with family, age, consent and combined pressures are new comparisons written for it. They are not copies of the experiments, and no population percentages are claimed for them.
Play The Distribution Free. No account. Your place is saved on your device.
More evidence
- The trolley problem: what people actually answer
- The framing effect: lives saved or lives lost
- The identifiable victim effect: one voice against many
- In-group favouritism: your people first
- The ultimatum game: would you refuse an unfair offer?
- Third-party punishment: paying to punish a stranger
- Omission bias: the harm you cause and the harm you allow
- Obedience to authority: the Milgram experiments
- Conformity: when everyone else gives the wrong answer
- Anchoring: the number you saw first
- Base-rate neglect: what a positive test really means
- The sunk cost effect: finishing what should be stopped
- The default effect: when doing nothing is the choice