Shared Experience and Third-Party Redistribution

Using a three-player dictator-game experiment, we find that similar performance during a shared experience with a real-effort task causes a redistributor to privilege the stakeholder who performed similarly. We generate the shared experience by varying whether a third-party decision maker and a stakeholder acquire money through an effortful activity or through random selection of a ticket. Our results have implications for how perceptions of one’s own self-determination and social connectedness based on perceived similarities affect redistributive preferences.