Evangelia Spantidaki (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) will present her paper on “How Narcissists Match and Play in Games” on January 25th at 11:00 AM, room QA405.
Abstract:
I investigate experimentally how subjects choose their partners and how they play depending on their personality characteristics. In particular, I study the role of narcissism within the context of games of collaboration, fairness, and competition. I find that no matter how narcissistic participants are, they tend to prefer to be matched with less narcissistic individuals in all games. Participants’ level of narcissism significantly predicts behavior in all contexts. The higher their level of narcissism, the less they contribute in a public goods game, the smaller the offer in an ultimatum game, and the poorer the performance in competition is. In the context of collaboration, participants adjust their behavior based on the characteristics of their partner; the more narcissistic the partner, the less they contribute. Subjects do not adapt their behavior in the context of competition and fairness. This paper sheds light on the under-investigated topic of matching and economic behavior of individuals across different levels of narcissism.