We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 18545
April 2026
Strategic Reasoning and Sensitivity to Stakes in the Dictator and Ultimatum Games: LLMs vs. Human Proposers
Solomon Polachek, Kenneth Romano, Ozlem Tonguc

This study examines how large language models (LLMs) respond to varying stake sizes in the Dictator and Ultimatum games using the high-stakes design introduced by Andersen et al. (2011). We test ten leading LLMs chosen for their accessibility, prominence, and differences in reasoning capabilities. Results reveal substantial variation across models: Only 5 of 10 models exhibit strategic behavior by offering more in the Ultimatum Game (UG) than in the Dictator Game (DG). Relative to humans, 4 models are consistently more generous, 2 consistently less, and 4 vary with stake size. Only 1 model shows a monotonic decline in UG offers as stakes increase; the remaining 9 are non-monotonic or stable. Unlike humans, most models reduce UG offers when endowed with wealth. Prompting for “human-like” decisions generally increases generosity in the UG. These findings are important for evaluating whether LLMs can serve as realistic proxies for human subjects in behavioral experiments and highlight key limitations and future directions for model development.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer-ext@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

About IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA@LISER NETWORK (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)