Role-Reversal Consistency:An Experimental Study of the Golden Rule

Abstract

We report an experiment that asks whether people in a strategic situation behave according to the Golden Rule, that is, do not treat others in ways that they find disagreeable to themselves, a property that we call role-reversal consistency. Overall, we find that over three quarters of the subjects are role-reversal consistent. Regression analysis suggests that this finding is not driven by players maximizing their subjective expected monetary earnings given their stated beliefs about their opponents' behavior. We find that subjects' stated beliefs and actions reveal mild projection bias. (JEL C78, C91).

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Costa-Gomes, Miguel Ju, Yuan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7541-9856 Li, Jiawen
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2018 Western Economic Association International. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.
Dates:	Published: 4 December 2018 Published (online): 31 August 2018 Accepted: 11 June 2018
Institution:	The University of York
Academic Units:	The University of York > Faculty of Social Sciences (York) > Economics and Related Studies (York)
Depositing User:	Pure (York)
Date Deposited:	21 Aug 2018 16:20
Last Modified:	21 Jan 2025 17:35
Published Version:	https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.12708
Status:	Published
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1111/ecin.12708
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:134839

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Role-Reversal Consistency:An Experimental Study of the Golden Rule

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