Affect and fairness: Dictator games under cognitive load

We investigate the role of affect and deliberation on social preferences. In ourlaboratory experiment subjects decide on a series of mini Dictator games while they are undervarying degrees of cognitive load. The cognitive load is intended to decrease deliberation andtherefore enhance the influence of affect on behavior. In each game subjects have two options:they can decide between a fair or an unfair allocation. We find that subjects in a high-loadcondition are more generous - they more often choose the fair allocation than subjects in alow-load condition. The series of mini Dictator games also allows us to investigate howsubjects react to the games’ varying levels of advantageous inequality. Low-load subjectsreact considerably more to the degree of advantageous inequality. Our results thereforeunderscore the importance of affect for basic altruistic behavior and deliberation in adjustingdecisions to a given situation.