11 - Incentives

Summary

This chapter focuses in more detail on the role of incentives in experimental sociology. Providing the right incentives in an experiment is an important precondition for drawing valid inferences. This is a predominant view in experimental economics based on the induced-value theory assuming that monetary incentives override any other human motivation in laboratory economic experiments. A slightly less demanding assumption is that subjects can be incentivized by monetary payoffs but are also motivated by other-regarding preferences or reciprocity. On the other hand, psychologists focus on motivations that subjects bring into the laboratory as a predisposition to behavior and on the framing of the situation. Sociological research takes elements from both perspectives and emphasizes institutional, cultural, and social determinants of human behavior. An important theoretical framework for experimental work is sociological work on framing. According to sociological framing theories, subjects interpret the situation in terms of the given cues and select an action that is appropriate to the situation. The chapter discusses the implications of these three views on the design of experiments in sociology.