The Dictator Game is similar to the Ultimatum Game. It is a game for two players. The first player "the proposer" determines an allocation of some good. The "responder" in this case simply receives the remander of the good not allocated to the proposer by the proposer. This game has been used to test the homo economicus model of individual behavior. If individuals were only concerned with their own economic well being, proposers would allocate the entire good to themselves and give nothing to the responder. However, Henrich et al (2004) discover that in a wide cross cultural study that individuals do allocate some money to the responder. This appears to demonstrate that individuals either fail to maximize their own expected utility or at least that they consider helping others to be of some positive benefit to themselves.

References

• Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, and Herbert Gintis (2004) Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies. Oxford University Press.