TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Anderson, Jon E.
AU  - Burks, Stephen V.
AU  - Carpenter, Jeffrey P.
AU  - Götte, Lorenz
AU  - Maurer, Karsten
AU  - Nosenzo, Daniele
AU  - Potter, Ruth
AU  - Rocha, Kim
AU  - Rustichini, Aldo
        TI  - Self Selection Does Not Increase Other-Regarding Preferences among Adult Laboratory Subjects, but Student Subjects May Be More Self-Regarding than Adults
        PY  - 2010/Dec/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 5389
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp5389
        AB  - We use a sequential prisoner's dilemma game to measure the other-regarding behavior in samples from three related populations in the upper Midwest of the United States: 100 college students, 94 non-student adults from the community surrounding the college and 1,069 adult trainee truckers in a residential training program. Both of the first two groups were recruited according to procedures commonly used in experimental economics (i.e., via e-mail and bulletin-board advertisements) and therefore subjects self-selected into the experiment. Because the structure of their training program reduced the opportunity cost of participating dramatically, 91% of the solicited trainees participated in the third group, so there was little scope for self-selection in this sample. We find no differences in the elicited other-regarding preferences between the self-selected adults and the adult trainees, suggesting that selection into this type of experiment is unlikely to bias inferences with respect to non-student adult subjects. We also test (and reject) the more specific hypothesis that approval-seeking subjects are the ones most likely to select into experiments. At the same time, we find a large difference between the self-selected students and the self-selected adults from the surrounding community: the students appear considerably less pro-social. Regression results controlling for demographic factors confirm these basic findings.
        KW  - other-regarding behavior
KW  - selection bias
KW  - laboratory experiment
KW  - truckload
KW  - social preferences
KW  - methodology
KW  - field experiment
KW  - trucker
        ER  -