Human behavior in golden balls game

• Main Authors: Eung, Chhor Sang, Lam, Chia Chee, Heng, Wendy Jie Ying
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Psychology::Ethics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/42422
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

We examine guilt aversion and gender discrimination in a Prisoner's Dilemma game setting, using data of the British television game show “Golden Balls”. Given the naturally competitive setting with real monetary rewards, we can observe the decisions made by the contestants in a controlled setting, guarded with strict and well-defined rules. Morality of the contestants is thus put to test under national TV setting, where the public may perceive them as cruel if they choose to steal the final jackpot, or naïve if they chose split and the other contestant stole everything in the end. From our results, we find that there is gender bias in the first round, regardless of personality traits (age, looks or profession) and game specific traits (number of killer balls and value of cash balls assigned). The probability of number of votes that a female contestant received decreases by 44.86% as compared to a male contestant, thus we can conclude that gender bias does exist. Further and more comprehensive research has to be conducted to test for the impact on decision-making in the Prisoner's Dilemma game with the presence of lying and guilt.