Figure 6
A Status Quo Bias in Dictator Behavior.
(a) Group-level mean offers of shocks across all dictators (vertical axis; N = 47), for each action frame (horizontal axis category). Solid black horizontal bars indicate the mean default offer under each frame. Upper dashed horizontal bars show the mean offers that would result from maximally selfish behaviour, lower dashed horizontal bars the mean offers that would result from maximally selfless behaviour. Mean offers were significantly higher in the Take frame than in the Give frame, consistent with a status quo bias. (b) Group-level mean net offers of money across all dictators (vertical axis; N = 25) under Give (G), Take (T) and Give or Take (G/T) action frames (horizontal axis category, individual bars), under both Gain and Loss (debt) frames (horizontal axis groupings). Here, taking money is equivalent to giving debt and vice versa. Solid black horizontal bars indicate the mean default offer under each frame. Upper dashed horizontal bars show the mean offers that would result from maximally selfless behaviour, lower dashed horizontal bars the mean offers that would result from maximally selfish behaviour. A status quo effect is evident for money gains and losses (debt), whereby net offers were higher when the net default offer was high (Take frame for money gains and Give frame for money losses), compared with when the net default offer was low (Give frame for money gains and Take frame for money losses). Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals generated by resampling the data 100,000 times with replacement. Asterisks indicate p values associated with two-tailed permutation tests; ***p<0.001.
