Note: I recently shifted my site from insaan.codeberg.page to khubsuratinsaan.codeberg.page. My site will continue to exist at the old URL till someone claims it. Please update your bookmark and RSS feed.

The Centre for Development Economics at Delhi School of Economics is a research institute funded by the central government to conduct research in Economics. A few days ago, Mrs Rubina, my microeconomics professor, shared an invitation from CDE about a ‘social experiment.’ The language of the invitation was very vague, and I was unable to determine if the students would be subjects or moderators in the project. Though the idea of being a subject is less enticing than that of being a moderator, it was still preferable to doing nothing. Hence, I signed up for the project and appeared on the campus at the allotted time.

The game started once 3 people arrived in the lab. In the game, we were paired with 2 people from the player pool and emulate 16 rounds of a special type of the “public goods problem.” In each round, every person was given ₹4. Out of these ₹4, a person could donate an amount x‎, double it, and distribute it among the other two players. As the instructions put it: the return on investment is zero. I quickly understood that the socially optimal decision would be for each person to donate all of their wealth, and the Nash equilibrium would be achieved by each person donating nothing.

Since I was in my rebel mode, I decided to donate all of my money in almost all of the rounds. Result: I got ₹29 at the end of the experiment, while player 3 got more than ₹100. You might be wondering, how was I able to get those ₹29? The simple answer is that player 1 also decided to contribute some money, though they followed the strategy of donating nothing for most of the rounds. A more nuanced answer would also involve why they contributed that money. Unfortunately, I missed the chance to talk to them after the experiment and, hence, that question would remain unanswered.

This was my first time experiencing a social experiment in a laboratory. Even though I was just a subject, I learned a lot of things from it. I spotted that the moderators were cutting corners on some fronts, though I admired the length of distance they were maintaining between themselves and the subjects. I noticed some difference in the way the researcher treated the winners and the losers. I saw that they were using a locally hosted website for the game and Google Forms to collect non-game data. (Ugh.) And, of course, I came to know through talking to other people that most people indeed donated almost nothing in the experiment.

At the end of the experiment, I was asked “keeping in view this experiment, rate the trustworthiness of people.” I reminded myself of how player 1 gave me money though it resulted in so many losses for them. Finally I chose a score of 4 out of 5.