%0 Report %A Attanasi, Giuseppe %A Rimbaud, Claire %A Villeval, Marie Claire %T Guilt Aversion in (New) Games: Does Partners' Payoff Vulnerability Matter? %D 2023 %8 2023 Feb %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) %C Bonn %7 IZA Discussion Paper %N 15960 %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp15960 %X We investigate whether a player's guilt aversion is modulated by the co-players' vulnerability. To this goal, we introduce new variations of a three-player Trust game in which we manipulate payoff vulnerability and endowment vulnerability. The former is the traditional vulnerability which arises when a player's material payoff depends on another player's action (e.g., recipient's payoff in a Dictator game). The latter arises when a player's initial endowment is entrusted to another player (e.g., trustor's endowment in a Trust game). Treatments vary whether trustees can condition their decision on the belief of a co-player who is payoff-vulnerable and/or endowment-vulnerable, or not vulnerable at all, and the decision rights of the vulnerable player. We find that trustees' guilt aversion is insensitive to the dimension of the co-player's vulnerability and to the decision rights of the co-player. Guilt is activated even absent vulnerability of the co-player whose beliefs are disappointed. It is triggered by the willingness to respond to the co-player's beliefs on his strategy, regardless of whether this strategy concerns this player or a third player's vulnerability, that is, indirect vulnerability. %K guilt aversion %K vulnerability %K psychological game theory %K Dictator game %K Trust game %K experiment