Anyone Up for Helping the Fisherman's Wife? More Solidarity with Accidental Misery than with Man-Made Misery

We experimentally examine the willingness to donate depending on whether “misery” has been randomly generated or self-inflicted by too high demands in bilateral negotiations. We find that randomness has a positive influence on the total amount of the donation. In the case of self-inflicted “misery”, we observe that the subject who may be perceived to have caused the unfavourable situation receives significantly less than the supposedly innocent subject.