Chapter 1
Introduction
The aim of this thesis is to examine the altruism behaviour related to social classes. Throughout this
research, a theoretical background based on previous studies around dictator game will be used to
support this experiment and also its implications.
In this first chapter, an introduction of the topic will be given and also an explanation as to why this is a
relevant issue in today’s society. Then the chapter will continue to give an introduction to the theories
that will discussed further in the next chapter.
1.1 Social Classes in Indonesia
Although Indonesia hold the title of the largest economy in Southeast Asia and the third largest
democratic country in the world, the country as a whole was still categorized as unstable. According to
financial institutions such as AMB and Euler Hermes, Indonesia has high potential risks, especially in
economic, politic and social sector.
Although Indonesia have high economic growth, which was accelerating to over 5.8 percent with GDP
amounted around $868.3 billion in 2013 according to the World Bank reports, the risk involved in
investing in Indonesia still outweigh the growing numbers in the economy.
According to the risk report conducted by AMB (Country Risk Report, 2014), Indonesia has a high level of
political and financial system risk with moderate economic risk. In this report, Indonesia was categorized
as Country risk tier (CRT) 4 out of 5 categories. CRT 4 was described as relatively unpredictable and
nontransparent political, legal and business environment with underdeveloped capital markets. In
addition, other financial institution (Euler Hermes, 2014) also categorized Indonesia as a country with
sensitive risk, which is the third tier in their 4 tier classification report.
Putting political instability aside, the problem between social classes is one of the biggest problems that
affect the economic and social stability of Indonesia. While income disparity are still a common problem
even in the most developed country, the disparity problem is a lot worse in most of developing
countries, including Indonesia. From macroeconomics perspective, the Gini index was measured at 38.1
in 2011 according to the World Bank (Gini Coefficient Data, 2014). This number is 2.5 point higher
compared to the year before. The increasing number in Gini index indicates that in between 2010 and
2011 alone, the rich became richer and the gap between the social classes widens. From the same data,
it is also important to note that 46 percent of the all the income in Indonesia are held by the highest 20
percent. This number shows how wide the gap between the social classes.
According to study by the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID) (Hasibuan,
2014), the income disparity in Indonesia are considered high all across country, including the capital city
of Jakarta. As an example of the disparity, we can look at the minimum wage and the average income. In
2014, the governor of Jakarta raises the minimum wage by 11 percent, rounded to 2.44 million rupiah.
The minimum wage in the capital is the highest compared to the other province, almost twice of the
smaller provinces. For comparison, in 2010, the average monthly income is more than 8 million per
capita (Badan Pusat Statistik, 2010). Compared to the average income, the minimum wage is even less
than one third. To add to that, the salary of the executives in Jakarta could reach around 250 million
rupiah per month, 100 times of the minimum wage. These numbers shows that even in the capital, the
disparity between the social classes are evident.
Furthermore, while from macroeconomic perspective it is beneficial for national economic stability that
Indonesia’s economy depends on domestic consumption rather than exports, this characteristic might
not be also beneficial for the social stability. In fact, the dependency of domestic consumptions might
create new problem for social stability. For government as policy maker, it is problematic that people
with high income and low income have very different needs to fulfill. With limited resources, balancing
the needs of the less fortunate and capturing the consumption higher social classes are becoming the
main concern. For each resource spent to increase the welfare of the lower class, there are fewer
resources to absorb the consumption of the highest earner.
Tension between the social classes around public policy is often become one of the biggest factor of
instability in Indonesia. The fact that there are different prospective on who’s to blame for the disparity
and consequences does not help in solving the problem.
From the perception of people from higher social classes, people from low social class are the main
suspect that causes instability. The inability of the lower social class to work with high productivity
because of, among other factors, lack of knowledge and motivation, is the reason why people from low
social class can only have low income. With limited competence, some will resort to mostly lesser crime,
such as theft or burglary, which in turn will create instability among the other negative effects.
In contrast, from the opposite perspective, the people from higher social class were the one guilty for
starving the opportunity from the lower class people. For instance, by prioritizing company profit rather
than the employees, the head of corporate is one to blame for the lack of opportunity for people from
lower social class to get a decent earnings and improve their well-being.
1.2 Social Class and unethical behaviour
However, these extreme points did not represent the real behaviour of the social classes. For most of
the cases, the one that catch the attention of public are often the extremes. To get better understanding
on the behaviour between the two classes, the application of scientific method might be an important
matter.
Unfortunately, using secondary data to explain behaviour might not be enough. For instance, the prison
survey might shows that majority of inmates come from lower social class, but the high number of
inmates from lower social class might be caused by the characteristic of lesser criminals that is easier to
noticed and solved compared to the more sophisticated white collar crimes. By using this data, one can
conclude that there are higher number of inmates from lower social class, but cannot assume that lower
class are the more likely to conduct crime. To understand the behaviour, more complex data are needed
to explain the more common data. Especially in a developing country like Indonesia, the more complete
data than these are less likely to be available.
Instead of using secondary data, creating new data by experiment is also a viable approach to
understand these social classes. In experiments, most of the extreme behaviors, such as white collar
crime or burglary, are almost impossible to recreate. Rather than trying to understand the extremes,
collecting the data on subtle behaviors such as cheating or lying is easier to replicate in an experiment.
In 2012, Piff et al. conducted an experiment that compares high social class and low social class on
unethical behavior. Combining field experiment and lab experiment, the study concluded that high
social class behaves more unethically compared to their counterpart. This result supported their earlier
study in 2010 which discover that low social class are also behaves more altruistic.
However, this finding was not conformed by studies conducted by the other academics. Trautmann
(2013) founds out that the relation between social classes and their behaviour are more complex than
what described by Piff et al. They argue that each social class has different morale rules resulting in
difference in the value on the unethical behaviour. Their conclusion came from the result of using a
wider sample in order to incorporate more variable which is not captured in the previous study. This
argument is supported by Ariely (2013) that suggest that within a particular domain, there might be
different value on particular ethical standards. Some behaviour that is acceptable by one social class
might violate the standards of the other social class.
This paper will try to make use of the advantages of both studies. By using more diverse subjects than
the standard student subjects, we expect to capture result that portrays realistic behaviour of both
classes. We also try to draw on the field experiment approach as used in the previous study. We also
make counts of the fact that there are a lot of variables in social class, therefore although we focus on
income as the deciding variable on the social classes, we also include few other variables that are
feasible to add in one experiments.
From this short overview, it is clear that the relation between social classes is important to understand,
which is also true in Indonesia. With considerable amount of variable affecting this relation, it is
important to not ignore the other variable while focusing on one. Acknowledging that, the main
research question of this study will therefore be: ‘Which social class behave more altruistically?’
1.3 Introduction to the study
The next chapter will discuss the previous studies that have been conducted in comparing social classes
including an experiment performed by Piff, Stancato, Côté, Mendoza-Denton, and Keltner (2012) which
already analyzed slightly in this chapter. The studies relevant to the experiment conducted in this thesis
will also be explored to give more understanding on the methods and results. The hypotheses and the
design of the study are adapted to capture the behaviour of the social classes, with the guidance from
the literature reviews.
The following chapters of this thesis are devoted to the conducted experiment. The methods of the
experiment are discussed in chapter 3, the results of the experiment in chapter 4 and the discussion in
chapter 5.
Chapter 3 includes details of the experiment, including the questionnaire design, the variables used to
measure unethical behavior and social class, the data collection process, and an overview of the
hypotheses. There will be several hypotheses to accommodate the research questions on this thesis.
Chapter 4 will be a detailed overview of the results of the experiment, which covers both descriptive and
statistical results. Chapter 5 will discuss the result in more detail by comparing them to the previous
studies. The final chapter of the paper will provides the conclusion of all the findings
Chapter 2
Article Review
2.1 Difference in behaviour between social classes
In the earlier study of Piff, Kraus, Côté, Cheng, & Keltner (2010) the authors found out that Individuals
from higher social class are less generous and altruistic. In this study, the experiment conducted shows
that higher social class individuals behave more selfish in an economic game, keeping significantly more
rewards for themselves. While on the other hand, lower social class individuals are willing to share
more. This findings leads to another set of experiment which also include field experiment.
Following these results, the authors conducted new study (Piff, Stancato, Côté, Mendoza-Denton, &
Keltner, 2012) consist of 7 different cases to complement their previous findings. This study also
concludes that higher social class individual is more likely to perform unethically behaviour compared to
the lower social class. In this paper, the writers refer social class, or socio economic status, as an
individual rank compared to others in society. This includes the factors such as income, occupation and
education.
In discussing this topic, the authors hope that by examining the relation between social class and
unethical behavior, the findings would help to understand behaviors that might have important
consequences for the society.
In study one and two, they observe the unethical behavior in driving on public streets. Both of the study
shows that people from higher social class tends to behave more unethically, in this specific experiment,
is that the driver are cutting off pedestrian and other cars.
The results of the other 5 studies consolidate their finding on the first two studies. Firstly, they found
out that higher social class individuals also behave more unethically in laboratory settings. Secondly,
they also found out that the main drive of high class people to behave unethically is that high class
people tend to be greedier than their counterpart. Other studies support this result (Piff, Wealth and the
Inflated Self: Class, Entitlement, and Narcissism, 2014)& (Poon, Chen, & DeWall, 2013), as they stated
that the behaviour of the upper class are associated with increased entitlement and narcissism, which
increase their tendency to put themselves higher than everyone.
One of the interesting points of this research was that they conduct 2 of 7 experiments in naturalistic
settings. In both of experiment, the subjects does not have any knowledge of them being on
experiment, which is a pointed out as one of important factor in conducting experiment in naturalistic
setting. Because of the naturalistic settings, the result of these experiments is very unlikely to be
affected by the experiment design.
However, one of the main criticisms of their method is because they categorize one’s social class based
on the vehicle they are driving. This design cause the researchers to only have very little control and
high error in deciding social class of the driver.
2.2 Dictator games
2.2.1. Foundation of Dictator Game
The foundation of dictator game was first introduced by Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler (1986). The
main goal of their study is to expand standard economic model to cater more to the behavior in the real
life. They argue that it is beneficial to change the assumption, even when the model might be more
complicated as a result.
Specific to the dictator game, the assumption is most of the economic agent is assumed to abide to the
law, but abiding law does not mean that they will give fair treatment if opportunity arises. People are
assumed to maximize their own profit, even if it might harm other people, as long as it is not against the
law.
What happens in the dictator games is surprisingly different from the assumption. From all the subjects
of the first dictator game, 76% of the subjects failed to follow the assumption that they will maximize
their profit. In contrary, they are willing to give up their incentive, which is 1 dollar in this experiment, to
punish the subjects that are unfair to others and to reward the subjects that are being fair. This result
shows that based on the assumption, 76% of people are behaving irrational. This result leads to the
importance that there is a need in modification towards this assumption.
2.2.2. Dictator Game Meta Study
In the last decade, there is a lot of dictator game experiments published. Between all of the dictator
games conducted, the results are varying in numbers. These differences might be caused by not only
one, but multiple factors (Krupka & Weber, 2013). In the other study (Engel, 2011), the author tried to
summarize the findings of these experiments by compile all the available data from the previous
experiment.
In this study, the authors are using the data from 131 papers discussing dictator games in the last few
decades. These papers cover 616 different treatments, which also include a lot of different approach to
the dictator games.
In general, they found out that subjects are willing to share on average 28.35% of their portion. This
number is covering all of the different type of dictator games. From this result and the distribution, they
conclude that dictators are more likely to give only a little of their share to other.
From all the subjects, they found that 36.11% of the subjects give nothing. This means that only this
36.11% are self-profit maximizing, thus only this number is considered to be rational according to the
generalized economic assumption.
From the same sample, 16.74% of the subjects give equal share to others, while 5.44% willing to give
their entire share to other.
In addition to the average number, they also try to analyze the entire factor that lead to different
approach in the dictator game. While there are many factors that might be possible to affect the
altruism, they found out that not all of these factors are statistically significant.
They found out that there are few effects that are robust to the altruism, some have positive correlation
and some have negative correlation. Subjects are more likely to be willing to give more, if:





The recipients are deserving (poor, needy, etc.)
Subjects are elderly
Subjects handle real money
Subjects are identified
The dictator game is held on developing country
In the other hand, subjects have higher probability to give less, if:




Subjects are children
Subjects are a group of people
Subjects are a student
Designed as repeated game
The results from this study are going to be the baseline for comparing the result of the experiment
conducted. The factors covered in this study will be used as list of factors that must be controlled in
dictator game experiment, to ensure the experiment have sufficient control.
2.3. Extra-Laboratory
There are many experiment that are in between field experiment and lab experiment. These
experiments did not have enough control to be called lab experiment, but lack the naturalistic feel to be
called field experiment.
In their study (Charness, Gneezy, & Kuhn, 2013), the authors are trying to make add new category
between field experiment and lab experiment. The authors are also trying to make a clear the difference
between field experiment, extra-laboratory experiment and lab experiment. The benefit and drawback
of using each type of experiment is also explained in this study.
In classifying these three different experiment types, the authors try to draw a line between the
categories.
An experiment is classified as field experiment if the subjects are not aware of the experiment. While in
the other hand lab experiments use students subjects, which is the most common experiment subjects
and are usually held in controlled lab environment.
Extra-lab experiment are in between the two categories, while still have clear distinction. There are few
characteristic that dissociate extra-lab experiment from lab experiment and field experiment. To make it
clearer the difference will be explained in two parts.
First part will explain about the difference between extra-lab and lab experiment. In lab experiment,
subjects are usually students. While student are a part of population, they are arguably a good
representation of population.
In general, students are considered to have same level of socio economic class and demographics. Most
of students are in their teen years and while some students are richer than the other, the disparity is not
as big as in the real population. Students are also considered to be capable of thinking critically and are
well educated. These characteristic alone differs student from the real population.
Moreover, there is a difference in the intention of students in doing experiment. When the experiment
offer some kind of incentive, students are most likely to cooperate because of the incentive. This does
not always apply in real life. Student subjects are also already made some effort to get to the
experiment. Either they spend their time looking for information about the availability of experiment
that might give them incentive, they also need to allocate their time to come to the experiment. These
are the reason why some academics suspect that using subject in experiment might create bias on the
incentive involved.
However, gathering a large number student as experiment subject are considered to be easier,
compared to gather the same number of subject that represent the real population. Using non-standard
subjects is also needs more control, such as age, gender and socioeconomic class to make them a better
representation than student.
Second part is the differences between extra-lab experiment and field experiment. Generally, field
experiment still follows the definition that to conduct field experiment, the subjects must not be aware
of the experiment.
In conducting extra-lab experiment, subjects’ awareness might create social pressure that can affect
their judgement. Subjects might feel obliged because they represent the population, so they might not
act on their interest, but to be a good representation of population. Presence of the experimenter might
also alter subjects’ decision to follow the direction of the experimenter interest, instead of their own.
On the other hand, to create condition where the subjects are not aware of the experiment might be
infeasible. In some of the experiment, it is impossible to gather the data without informing the subjects,
because the results are not easily observable. In addition, gathering data without informing subjects
might sometimes are ethically unacceptable. Furthermore, in conducting field experiment, experimental
controls are sacrificed. Consequently, field experimental studies are harder to replicate for further
studies. For the reasons stated above, therefore field experiment is harder to conduct compared to
extra-lab experiment.
This extra-lab experiment definition matches the methodology and the limitation which will be used in
our experiment. The details on the methodology will be explained in the next chapter.
Chapter 3
Methodology
3.1 Aim of the experiment
The aim of this experiment is to study how people from both higher and lower social class are willing to
share their portion of income, especially in the case of unexpected income.
The aforementioned literature shows that in the most of dictator games, on average people will give
28.35% of the pie. However, the number comes from dictator games that were conducted with wide
variety of factors. Changing even one of the factors might affect the result on the experiment. For
example, most of lab experiments use university student as subjects of their experiment. When they use
non-students, there are more likely that the subjects will give more of their share. Therefore, in this
study it is expected that that the result will differ from the “normal” dictator games, because of the
different in factors.
The research method used in this paper will be an extra-laboratory experiment, where the experiment is
held on a non-laboratory location and using non-student subjects. The outlines of the experiments will
be discussed followed by their specifications.
The setting used for this experiment was by giving the respondent a certain value of money and record
their willingness to give portion of that money to other respondent.
3.2 Specification of experiment
3.2.1 Specifications of the Experiment: Location
The experiment need to be strictly held on only one location, mainly to reduce the confounding effects
that might arise because of the specifics of location and surroundings. To be more specific with the
design, the experiment needs to fulfill two conditions to effectively reduce the confounding effects.
The first condition is that the experiment needs to be held on location where both high and low social
classes are present with roughly same possibility. Satisfying this condition might be an obstacle because
most of the public places in Jakarta are highly segregated.
The second condition is that there is no difference in the intention from both social classes on why they
go to that certain location. For example, in a fancy restaurant, it might be possible that there is lot of
people from low social class as well as people from high social class, but the condition is not optimal
because they have different purposes. While the high social class goes there to enjoy their dinner, the
low social class goes to the same location to work. The difference might cause confounding effects that
are easily avoided by not choosing this kind of location.
To address this, pilot experiment was conducted in two location that are most likely to satisfy the two
condition stated before. For this pilot experiment, a bank and Car Free Day (Seputar Car free day DKI
Jakarta, 2014) event in Jakarta, Indonesia, is chosen.
In the pilot experiment, the income level and MacArthur scale was measured. The results are satisfying
for bank and Car Free Day, as both condition satisfied in these two location. On both locations, the first
condition was satisfied. While the second condition also satisfied because all the subjects going to the
bank were customers, and the subjects that participate in the Car Free Day were going for leisure. In the
end, Car Free Day was chosen because of the practicality of the location.
The experiment was held twice, both on Sunday morning, started at 07.00 and ended at 11.00, right
before the event ended.
3.2.2 Specifications of Experiment: Incentive
The incentive used in this experiment is cash money, with the total amount of fifty thousand Rupiah for
each of the subject (around 3 Euro) which consist of ten sheets of five thousand Rupiah.
This experiment chooses to use fraction of five thousand to give ten different options for the subject to
choose, which is considered to be enough but not too many that might be overwhelming.
The experiment also needs to create a condition where the subjects have the feeling that they already
own the money before they give it to the other subject. This is the reason why in this experiment, the
incentive used are cash money which will directly impact their gain over the incentive.
The amount of fifty thousand rupiah was used based on several limitations and reasoning. First of all,
this experiment has a strict budget, which also limits the expense on the incentive. For 60 respondents,
the costs are expected to be around 180 euro, which is still viable for budget for this experiment.
Second, the incentive might seem lower than the other dictator games if compared directly using Euro
as a base currency, but 50 thousand rupiah still considered as decent amount of money in Indonesia. For
a better understanding on the comparison, Big Mac Combo Meal was priced around 35 thousand rupiah
(2.2 euro) in Indonesia. On the contrary, this same combo meal would cost around 7 euro in the
Netherlands. Comparing the incentives using rationalizing, 50 thousand rupiah in Indonesia is equal to
one and half combo meal, which is priced around 10 euros in Europe. With this reasoning, it is expected
that this amount of incentive will be able to gives the subjects incentive to think about their choices and
trigger their (or lack of) altruism.
3.2.3 Specifications of Experiment: Anonymity
In order to capture the behavior of all subjects, this experiment uses the advantages of single-blind
experiment design. The subjects only know that they have the option to give their share of money to
other subject, without any clues about the other subject. This specific design is to make sure that the
subjects’ behaviour is not affected by to whom he will give the money to.
In the experiment the subjects was also instructed to put back the money in the envelope and seal
them, to ensure that their choice are not affected by presence of the researcher.
Unfortunately we cannot isolate the subjects from other people walking by in the events, which might
trigger the feeling of social control in form of other people’s judgement.
3.2.4 Specifications of Experiment: Instructions
In this experiment, each of the subjects is only going to participate once to remove the possibilities that
reciprocity effect might occur (Falk & Fischbacher, 2006).
3.2.4.1 Specifications of Experiment: Opening Lines
Every time the respondent approached, exact opening lines are asked to minimize the chance that the
respondent might get different perception on the experiment before agreeing to cooperate. In the
opening line, the experimenter introduced himself to the subjects to inform that they are a part of an
academic experiment. Quantity of the incentive is also clearly mentioned to the subjects to get their
attention on the experiment. Lastly, the subjects are asked if they willing to cooperate, to make sure
that they know after they agree, they are already on the experiment.
Good morning, Sir/Mam. Can I have your attention for a minute or two?
I am a student conducting an experiment for my thesis. In the end of this experiment you might
be able to get up to 50 thousand rupiah depending on your answers.
I will only ask few questions, so it will not take a lot of your time. (Shows them the questions and
the envelope)
Do you agree to cooperate on this experiment?
3.2.4.2 Specifications of Experiment: Instruction on envelope
After the respondent agrees to cooperate on the experiment, the envelope was handed to them, stating
there are two things inside the envelope; 50 thousand rupiah and the instruction paper. The instructions
are already tested to several trial respondents, to make sure that the instructions are easy to read and
that all respondents will understand the instruction regardless of their social classes. Experimenter
minimizes interaction on the subjects during these steps of experiment to reduce the risk of
experimenter giving away cues that might affect the choices. After the subjects made their choice, as
written on the instruction paper, both instruction paper and the money they want to give to the other
subject are put back into the envelope and sealed by the subjects.
3.2.4.3. Social class and demographic questions
After completing the task with the envelopes, the subjects are asked few questions afterwards, mainly
about personal information. They were asked about their demographics (age, gender) and also the
determinants to measure for their social class (MacArthur scale, income and expenses) To reduce the
chance that the subjects might answer the personal question untruthfully because of the choice they
made, two unrelated questions are included. These questions were asking about their purpose going to
this event and how long they spend their time on the event.
3. 2.5 Specifications of Experiment: Subjects
In this experiment there is only one treatment. All the subjects are randomly approached by the
experimenter on the car free day event. The subject pool in this experiment is targeted to have a
minimum amount of 60 subjects, with age ranging from 17 to 70. The balance between both genders is
expected to be the same, but only to certain level because of the time limitation on the experiment.
There are no control on income levels, as we are confident that people attending the events are does
include a good number between the high income and the low income.
This study includes only one sample pool which includes all the subjects. However, this sample pool can
be easily divided into two groups, the group with higher social class, and the group with lower social
class. The social class can be divided based on three independent variables which are income, spending
or MacArthur scale score of the subjects.
Lower social class consist of subject with lower than average income, spending or MacArthur score
compared to the entire subject pool. While the higher social class, which is the rest of the subjects, are
the subjects with income, spending or MacArthur score higher than average.
3.2.6 Specifications of the experiment: Recipient Subjects
After collecting all the data available for this experiment, all the money that are given back to
experimenter are put back in new envelope, to be distributed to the recipient subjects. The amount of
money in each envelope is consistent with the result of the experiment. For this task, the experimenter
did not control for the recipient age or gender. The same opening line approach is also used to ask for
cooperation. While giving the envelope, it is explained that the amount of money inside the envelope is
a result of an experiment.
3.3 Variables
3.3.1. Dependent Variable
The dependent variables in this study are the values of the money that subject willing to share to the
other person. In this experiment we will call this variable as the share variable, which will represent the
willingness of the subject to share their portion of money to the other subject. This variable is the one
that used to measure the level of altruism of each subjects. The higher the value of money
3.3.2. Independent variables
The independent variables in this study mostly cover the social class and the demographic cues of the
subjects. As for demographic variables, which are also added as control variables, there are two
variables that will be used in this experiment which is age and gender.
There are also social classes variables, which already explained in section 3.2, these variables are:



Income. The subject was asked to estimate their monthly income, without specification about
the source. For some subjects, it is possible that they did not currently have a job. The following
options were provided to the subjects; lower than 2.5 million rupiah, 2.5 to 5 million rupiah, 575 million rupiah, 7.5-10 million rupiah and above 10 million rupiah.
Spending. The subject was asked to estimate their monthly spending. The options are the same
as above.
MacArthur. The subject was asked to choose where they feel they stand in social status
compared to other people. The options are 10 steps ladder, with each of the steps in the ladder
represent social classes.
3.4 Hypothesis
This study investigates how altruistic people are by measuring their willingness to give their share of
unexpected income. There are two different hypotheses in this experiment.
The first set of hypothesis will examine if there are any relation between the dependent variable and
independent variable or not. According to the previous studies, it is stated that there are a lot of variable
affecting the independent variable (altruism) between the social classes. The general assumption is that
the independent variables are not related to the dependent variable.
H0: There is no relation between the dependent and independent variable
H1: There is a relation between the dependent and independent variable
This hypothesis will be tested using Fisher’s exact test, which can examine if there is any relation
between two variables, with the two variables being the independent and the dependent variable.
Secondly, before we can understand which group behaves more altruistic, we find out if there is any
difference between the social classes. From the previous studies, there are difference behaviour
between both social class. Following these results, it is expected that there will be a difference in
altruism between these social classes. Thus, the second set of hypothesis is as follow:
H0: Willingness to share is not different between two groups of subjects.
H1: Willingness to share is different between two groups of subjects.
Chapter 4
Results
4.1 Descriptive results
From all the 65 subjects, 37 are males and 28 are females. While the experimenter tried to balance the
number between both genders, in this experiment male are more likely to cooperate when approached.
In the first week, from all 33 subjects agreed to cooperate, only 7 are females. This unbalanced number
of subject from each gender is not likely to be caused by the difference in the number of males or
females on the events. The difference in number is more likely because of males are more willing to
cooperate. The experimenter also found out that females are more likely to refuse when being
approached, even before the experiment is explained. In second week the experimenter makes extra
effort to approach and get more female subjects to cooperate, but the effort is limited by time of the
event.
Age is ranging from 17 to 70, with the average age of 39 and standard deviation of 11.7.
Group of Lower
Income/Spending
Group of Higher
Income/Spending
Monthly
Income/Spending
Lower than 2.5 million
Group Total
2.5 million to 5 million
5 million to 7.5 million
7.5 million to 10 million
Higher than 10 million
Group Total
Total Subjects
Number of Subjects
Income
28
28
11
11
2
13
37
65
Spending
28
28
19
9
3
6
37
65
In this experiment, subjects with income or spending lower than 2.5 million is classified to the group
with lower income, which is will also classified as lower class group.
Interestingly, people with income lower than 2.5 million is not always also having spending lower than
2.5 million. In this experiment, 5 of the subjects with income lower than 2.5 million have monthly
spending more than 2.5 million. In the other hand, 5 subjects with the spending lower than 2.5 million
have income more than 2.5 million. As a result, these subjects might be treated as lower class or higher
class, depending on the independent variable used in the treatment.
On the results on the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, we found that 34 of the subjects have
scored 6 or higher, while the other 29 scored 5 or lower. In answering this independent variable, two of
the subjects did not complete the answer for this question but still complete the other question, so they
will be ignored for only for when MacArthur scale is computed.
On the average, subjects are willing to give up 64.46% of their share for other subject. Only 5 of all the
subjects choose to give nothing, while 28 subjects are willing to give their entire share.
4.2 Statistical results
Non-parametric test is used because of the test are based on fewer assumption. Non-parametric test
will be fitting because of two reasons. The first reason is that the sample size of the data, which is only
consist of 65 subjects, might not be large enough to be sufficient for parametric test. And the second
reason would be that the data are most likely not to be normally distributed. Using parametric test,
these two assumptions are not needed to be fulfilled.
However, non-parametric test are less powerful than the parametric test. This is the reason why the
parametric test was also included in the result. By also including the parametric test, the experimenter
expects that both of the statistical tests will give better understanding on the result of this experiment.
4.2.1 Non-Parametric Test
4.2.1.1 Fisher’s exact test
Fisher exact test was used because of the data can be easily fitted into 2x2 groups of samples. Every
independent variable will be used to separate the subjects into two groups of sample. The first group is
going to be group which consists of subjects with higher than average score for that independent
variable and the second group will consist of subjects with lower than average score for the same
independent variable.
The dependent variable, which will be described as share (willingness to share) are going to be
separated into two group, based on their result compared to the average. The higher share group is
subjects with the share more than the average (mean: 32.23) while the lower share group consists of
subjects with the share less than the average. Higher share group consist of 30 subjects, and the lower
share group consist of 35 subjects.
For independent variables, the group is divided with different classifications:



Gender: groups are divided to male group with 37 subjects, and female group with 28 subjects.
Age: groups are divided to old group and young group. Old group consist of people that are 40
years old or older, which consist of 33 subjects. The young group consists of 32 subjects that are
39 years old or younger.
Income: groups are divided into high income and low income. Higher income group consist of 37
subjects that have income higher than 2.5 million rupiah per month. While the lower income
group consists of 28 subjects with income lower than 2.5 million rupiah per month.


Spending: grouping using the same classification as income. Higher spending group consist of 37
subjects that have spending higher than 2.5 million rupiah per month, while the lower spending
group consist of 28 subjects with spending lower than 2.5 million rupiah per month.
MacArthur Scale: group divided into high and low MacArthur scale group. 34 subjects with
MacArthur scale score 6 or higher are classified as high MacArthur scale group and 29 subjects
with MacArthur scale score lower than 6 are classified as low MacArthur scale group.
With fisher exact test, each of the independent variable will be paired with the dependent variable to
test whether there are any relation between the dependent variable and the independent variable. The
test will be used to see if the hypotheses stated in the previous chapter hold on this experiment. The
hypotheses that will be tested in the Fisher exact test are the following:
H0: There is no relation between the dependent and independent variable
H1: There is a relation between the dependent and independent variable
For the example of income as the independent variable, all the subjects are divided into 4 groups:




Group of subjects with high income and high (willingness to) share
Group of subjects with high income and low (willingness to) share
Group of subjects with low income and high (willingness to) share
Group of subjects with low income and low (willingness to) share
After the groups are specified, each of the subjects will be put into one of the groups:
Higher Income
N = 37
Lower Income
N=28
High Share
22
Low Share
15
8
20
Using Fisher’s exact test, we will get the p value of each independent variable compared to the
dependent variable. The number will be used to decide which of the hyphoteses hold for each
independent variable.
Fisher’s Exact Test Result
Independent Variable
Gender
Age
Income
Spending
MacArthur Scale
P value
0.8021
1.0000
0.0230
0.0780
0.7999
Result 1: There is a relation between willingness to share (dependent variable) and income (independent
variable).
From the result of the fisher exact test, only income independent variable shows statistically significant
result to reject the H0 (0.0230) at 5% significance level. This means that for income independent
variable, H0 is rejected, and the result from willingness to share is related to income. Table below
shows the grouping of subjects used in exact fisher test.
However, the result for the other independent variable (gender, age, spending, MacArthur) shows that
for these independent variable, H0 is not rejected. This means in this experiment, these independent
variables does not have statistically significant relation the willingness to share.
We also looking into the results of the MacArthur score, to determine if this independent variable has
any relation to other independent variable, especially income and spending which is also used to
determine the social class. As a result, we also found that MacArthur score are indeed correlated to
both of the income and spending variable when tested using Fisher’s exact test.
Independent variable correlation to MacArthur Score
Income
Spending
P value
0.0002
0.0255
4.2.1.2 Mann-Whitney U test
Mann-Whitney U test is used in this experiment to determine if the willingness to share is different
between groups of subjects. For this non-parametric test, the dependent variable will also be compared
to all 5 independent variables stated above. This method will be used to decide which of the following
hypotheses hold for each independent variable:
H0: Willingness to share is not different between two groups of subjects.
H1: Willingness to share is different between two groups of subjects.
Independent variable
Gender
Age
Income
Spending
MacArthur Scale
Higher Group Mean
Rank
34.68
33.21
38.49
36.86
33.79
Lower Group Mean Rank
P Value
30.79
32.78
25.75
27.89
32.13
0.389
0.923
0.005
0.047
0.710
Result 2: Subjects with higher income and/or spending are more likely to share more.
Result from the table shows that from 5 independent variables tested in this experiment, 2 of the
independent variables shows statistically significant difference between groups, while the other 3 does
not show statistically significant difference.
The data shows that higher income group have a higher willingness to share (38.49>25.75) compared to
the lower income group and the difference is statistically significant (0.005) at 5% significance level. The
similar result also shows for higher spending group, which have higher willingness to share
(36.86>27.89) and the difference are also statistically significant (0.047) at 5% significance level. In
conclusion, from these two results, the hypothesis that the willingness to share do not differ between
the two groups of subjects are rejected for income and spending independent variable.
In the other hand, male on average are willing to give more to the others (34.68>30.79), but the
difference between the male subjects and the female subjects are not statistically significant (0.389) at
5% significance level. The same results are also found in age and MacArthur scale groups, which mean
that there is also a number difference in mean rank when using both independent variable, but the
difference is not statistically significant. Therefore, the null hypothesis that the willingness to share is
not different between the two groups of subjects is not rejected for Gender, Age, and MacArthur
independent variable.
4.2.2 Parametric Test
To explain the results better, multiple linear regression was used to see how the independent variables
relation with the dependent variable.
Although there might be few assumptions that cannot hold because of the small data and the nonstandard distribution, the non-Parametric test that discussed earlier already shows some results that in
some way, income as independent variable have some influence on the willingness to share.
Using OLS, the researcher found out that no variable are significant when all 5 independent variable are
included in the regression.
Table. OLS Regression with 5 Independent Variable (65 observation)
Variable
Coefficient
Std. Error
C
28.249
9.559
AGE
-0.086
0.191
GENDER
2.466
4.493
SPENDING
-1.175
3.297
INCOME
4.702
2.877
MACARTHUR
-0.536
1.014
Dependent Variable : SHARE (willingness to share)
r2=0.105
P Value
0.005
0.656
0.585
0.723
0.107
0.599
VIF
1.037
1.042
3.613
4.118
1.291
However, after excluding spending, the income variable has become statistically significant to the
dependent variable. Spending is rationally excluded because in the model with all 5 IV included,
spending and income shows high VIF (4.115 and 3.604 respectively). The high correlation between this 2
IV is also predictable in the real life, because someone’s spending would be very likely to be correlated
with this income.
Result 3: Income is positively related to willingness to share.
With 4 independent variable included (income, age, gender, MacArthur) income is the only independent
variable which is statistically significant to the model (0.020) with positive coefficient (3.854). This result
will reinforce the statement that in this experiment, income has a strong possibility to be significantly
related to the willingness to share.
Table. OLS Regression with 4 Independent Variable (65 observation)
Variable
Coefficient
Std. Error
C
27.443
9.261
AGE
-0.084
0.190
GENDER
2.712
4.407
INCOME
3.854
1.607
MACARTHUR
-0.498
1.001
Dependent Variable : SHARE (willingness to share)
r2=0.103
P Value
0.004
0.659
0.541
0.020
0.620
VIF
1.037
1.018
1.303
1.277
In the contrary, other independent variables do not show any statistically significant result in both
regressions. These results are in line with the non-parametric results that show that the independent
variables other than income do not have a significant effect on the willingness to share of the subjects.
5. Discussion
Compared to the other dictator game studies, the results from this experiment raise some discussion
points.
The result from the previous chapter shows that in general, subjects from our experiment behave more
altruistically compared to the other studies that have been conducted. From the entire pool of subjects
on this experiment, the subjects willing to share 64.46% of the money given to them. While in the other
studies, the average percentage of money given to other is only 28.35%. Because the number is more
than double, we need to point out the possible explanation for the result.
There are few factors that have already been pointed out by Engels (2010), which might possibly alter
the result from one dictator game. We see these factors as the reason to why the result from our
experiment differs from the average dictator game. Most of the factors on this experiment are similar to
the standard dictator game. For instance, single recipient which is the standard of dictator game was
used in this experiment instead of multiple recipients. Using multiple recipients instead of single
recipient might increase the altruism of subjects in the dictator game. However, there are factors that in
this experiment that are different from the standard dictator game.
Two of the factors, non-student subjects and handling of real money are intentionally set to be different
from standard dictator game to add more realistic approach to the dictator game.
Compared to their counterparts, student subjects are more likely to give nothing and less likely give
everything. In contrary, on average, non-student subjects are less likely to give nothing and on average
are willing to share more. By using non-student subjects in this experiment, it is likely that the result will
show higher altruism compared to the standard dictator games which use student subjects.
In this experiment, subjects are given real money before they decide on which amount they will give to
the other subjects. This approach is different from the more common method in lab, where the subjects
only make their choices on the paper and only saw the money after they complete the experiment. In
their study, Engels (2010) found out that giving real money and letting subject to handle the money
have strong effect on the behaviour. On average, letting subject handle the real money will increase the
willingness to share with other. Using real money also reduce the probability that subject will give
nothing, and also increase the probability that subject will give everything. These changes in probability
are consistent with the result of this experiment.
The two other factors, which is the amount of incentive and that the experiment is conducted on
developing country are the consequences of limitation of experiment.
Firstly, one of the limitations in conducting this experiment was that the incentives are limited by the
budget restriction. While on paper the incentives are comparable to the standard dictator game, which
is 10 euro, it is possible that the incentives might not be enough to encourage subjects to keep their
money.
On average, people in developing countries are willing to share more than in the western countries. This
increase in altruism also shown in the number of people that gives nothing, which is less frequent than
in western countries. This explanation match the result from this experiment, that by conducting the
experiment in developing country, the altruism of are higher than in western countries, which is most of
the dictator games are conducted.
In the other hand, there are also conflicting finding on the effect of conducting the dictator game on
developing countries. While the result from Engels (2010) shows that people from developing countries
are less likely to give everything, in this experiment this is not the case. The result from our dictator
game shows that 28 of 65 subjects chose to give everything, which is higher compared to the standard
dictator game.
The last two factors, which is the possibility of needy recipients and selection bias, appeared because of
lack of control in this area when using extra-lab experiment setting.
When the recipients are needy, subjects are more likely to give more of their share. In lab experiment,
especially where all the subjects are mostly students, it is easier to give information to the subjects that
the recipients are indeed not needy. In this experiment, this factor cannot be controlled. Thus, the
subjects might seek or retrieve the related information from their surroundings. For instance, there are
a lot of sellers in the streets in the event.
Because these sellers are not considered as a suitable subject for this experiment, we did not include
them in the pilot test. These sellers did not considered as potential subjects because they have different
intention from other participant. In turn, it is likely that the subjects will notice these sellers and take
account that they might be potential recipient. By doing so, it is possible that the subject will consider
that the recipient might be more likely to be needy and will make them give up more of their share.
The last factor is not discussed in Engels (2010) but might also be important to point out. In this
experiment, the subjects are willing to “help” the experimenter.
Before knowing that there are incentives involved and agreeing to cooperate to the experiment, the
subjects are already willing to listen to the experimenter’s introductions. Meanwhile, there are other
potential subjects that turn down the experimenter even before the introduction started. Refusing to be
approached by experimenter is not categorizing someone to have low altruism or unethical behaviour
by any means, but by sparing their time, it is more likely that the subjects who are willing to cooperate
are people with higher altruism than average, which is a selection bias.
Chapter 6
Conclusion
The main purpose of this thesis is to look for better understanding on altruism, social class and the
relation between two of them. As specified at the first chapter, the research question is as follows:
Which social class behaves more altruistically in Indonesia?
In this thesis we conduct a dictator game that is trying to capture a closer to real life behaviour by using
extra-laboratory approach. Rather than conducting the standard dictator game, this thesis used nonstudent subject and change few elements such as how the incentives are given to in hope that the
experiment will deliver a result that are closer to subjects’ actual behaviour on altruism. Using these
methods, there are two main conclusions that can be drawn from this study.
First, by using the extra-laboratory experiment approach and altering few of the elements that we
predicted will make the dictator game closer to actual behaviour of the subjects, we found out that the
altruism in general is a higher than the standard dictator game. By changing these few aspects, it is
predicted that one dictator games might capture different level of altruism compared to the other
dictator games. Based on previous study by Engel (2010), the higher level of altruism is expected owing
to the fact that there are few alterations on the methods, such as handling real money to the subjects
before they do the actual dictator game. However, the result from our dictator game is still surprising as
the change in the altruism level is more than twice compared to the average standard dictator game.
In this experiment we also found that in the subjects from higher social class behave more altruistically
compared to the lower social class. This result is especially true when we use income as the variable to
define the social class of the subjects. This finding contradicts the previous studies conducted by Piff
(2010) which also define social class by the subjects’ wealth. Their study claim that lower social class is
more altruistic compared to their counterpart, while our experiment shows the opposite result.
However, this result does not exactly means that the previous studies are cancelled out by our
experiment. On the contrary, the results from this experiment can be used as a complement to the
results from other studies. For example, the behavior of both social classes might vary in different
demographics where the experiments were held, in this case the comparison is between developed and
developing countries. To conclude, further study was needed to increase the understanding on altruism
behavior between social classes. For instance, conducting dictator game with extra-laboratory approach
in developed country might shed the difference behavior between the altruism behaviour in developed
and developing countries.
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