This note paper considers briefly whether dictator games are a good tool to measure altruism. The answer is negative: behavior in dictator games is seriously confounded by what I shall label experimenter demand effects. Section 2 briefly defines dictator games and reviews some of its purported...

As a stress test of experimenter demand effects, we run an experiment where subjects can physically destroy coupons awarded to them. About one subject out of three does. Giving money back to the experimenter is possible in a separate task but is more consistent with an experimenter demand effect...

This paper presents the results of an experiment where an unequal wealth distribution was created and then subjects could act to change this wealth distribution. Subjects received money by betting and possibly by arbitrary (“undeserved”) gifts; they could then pay to reduce, redistribute...