Identifying Social Norms Using Coordination Games: Why Does Dictator Game Sharing Vary?

We introduce a method for identifying social norms, based on the property that they reflect collective perceptions regarding the appropriateness of behaviors. We demonstrate that the norms we elicit, along with a simple model combining concern for norm-compliance with utility for money, predict changes in behavior across several variants of the dictator game. Our findings indicate that individuals care about monetary payoffs and the social appropriateness of any action taken. Further, we find that a social norm is best characterized as a profile of varying degrees of social appropriateness over the entire menu of actions available to a decision maker.