Old Age and Prosocial Behavior: Social Preferences or Experimental Confounds? [Dataset]doi:10.11588/data/10067heiDATA2016-02-031Kettner, Sara Elisa; Waichman, Israel, 2016, "Old Age and Prosocial Behavior: Social Preferences or Experimental Confounds? [Dataset]", https://doi.org/10.11588/data/10067, heiDATA, V1Old Age and Prosocial Behavior: Social Preferences or Experimental Confounds? [Dataset]doi:10.11588/data/10067Kettner, Sara ElisaWaichman, IsraelKettner, Sara ElisaWaichman, IsraelGermanyheiDATAheiDATA: Heidelberg Research Data RepositoryWaichman, Israel2016-02-02Social Sciencessocial preferencesparticipant pooldictator gameageexperimenter demand effecthypothetical biasC91D64Experimental and field evidence indicate a positive link between social preferences and age, most strikingly between the elderly and young adults. However, it is possible that the seemingly positive link between age and preferences stems from confounds in experimental procedure. In a dictator game study we find that elderly participants do indeed transfer higher shares of their endowments to their peers than a standard sample of student participants. This result holds good even in treatments accounting for wealth differences and experimenter demand effects. However, we observe no difference in behavior when we compare elderly participants and students who have not previously participated in economic experiments. Accordingly, it is possible that the seemingly stronger social preferences of the elderly are due to confounds associated with lack of experience with economic experiments. In addition, when comparing incentivized and hypothetical transfer decisions, we observe a hypothetical bias in treatments with a "take" framing, but not in treatments with the standard "give" framing.Please citeCoins&Washers.jpgimage/jpegEnvelopes.jpgimage/jpegFinal_Dataset_Kettner&Waichman.xlsxapplication/octet-streamIndex_Dataset_Final.pdfapplication/pdfTranslation of Instructions_hypothetical_give_5EURO.pdfapplication/pdfTranslation of Instructions_hypothetical_take_5EURO.pdfapplication/pdfTranslation of Instructions_Incentivized_give_5EURO.pdfapplication/pdfTranslation of Instructions_Incentivized_take_5EURO.pdfapplication/pdf