How to Act Knowing How Others Acted in the Same Circumstances : Some Experimental Evidence from the Ultimatum Game

Contemporary works, such as Lusk & Hudson's (2004), find that the greater knowledge regarding the possible results of the ultimatum game lead to results closer to the subgame perfect equilibrium. In this paper we seek to further this line of research beyond the fact of making the individuals aware of the game's purely strategical solution (the Nash Equilibrium). To this end, we use a scenario where the individuals are aware of the results obtained by previous players in the ultimatum game. Our results show that this knowledge doesn't necessarily lead to optimizing behavior (as in the standard solution), but, on the contrary, the heuristic rule of offering 50% strengthens