Would you share?.
You are going to split 100 TL (Turkish lira) with a stranger: what would you offer, would you accept the offers made to you, and how much would you give if the other side could not refuse?
Original study
- Güth, W., Schmittberger, R., & Schwarze, B. (1982). An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 3(4), 367–388. Source
- Oosterbeek, H., Sloof, R., & van de Kuilen, G. (2004). Cultural differences in ultimatum game experiments: Evidence from a meta-analysis. Experimental Economics, 7(2), 171–188. Source
- Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., & McElreath, R. (2001). In search of Homo economicus: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies. American Economic Review, 91(2), 73–78. Source
- Cameron, L. A. (1999). Raising the stakes in the ultimatum game: Experimental evidence from Indonesia. Economic Inquiry, 37(1), 47–59. Source
- Andersen, S., Ertaç, S., Gneezy, U., Hoffman, M., & List, J. A. (2011). Stakes matter in ultimatum games. American Economic Review, 101(7), 3427–3439. Source
- Sanfey, A. G., Rilling, J. K., Aronson, J. A., Nystrom, L. E., & Cohen, J. D. (2003). The neural basis of economic decision-making in the Ultimatum Game. Science, 300(5626), 1755–1758. Source
- Forsythe, R., Horowitz, J. L., Savin, N. E., & Sefton, M. (1994). Fairness in simple bargaining experiments. Games and Economic Behavior, 6(3), 347–369. Source
- Engel, C. (2011). Dictator games: A meta study. Experimental Economics, 14(4), 583–610. Source
- Bolton, G. E., Katok, E., & Zwick, R. (1998). Dictator game giving: Rules of fairness versus acts of kindness. International Journal of Game Theory, 27(2), 269–299. Source
Our adaptation
A hypothetical adaptation of Güth et al.'s (1982) ultimatum game using the strategy method. Round 1 asks for an offer out of 100 TL and for the minimum acceptable offer, with sliders in 5 TL steps and no default position; the offer is then matched with the minimum of a random previous visitor. In round 2 three real offers drawn at random from previous participants are accepted or rejected one by one. Round 3 is a dictator game: the other side cannot reject.
Differences from the original study
- Money is hypothetical and there is no live counterpart; matching uses recorded decisions.
- Asking for the minimum in advance (strategy method) can slightly increase rejection of low offers.
- Rounds are always played in the same order.
Measured variables
The columns of the open data file. List fields are expanded into numbered columns (for example rt_60, est_3); JSON columns contain only numbers and fixed stimulus names.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
offer | integer | Round 1: offer to the other side (TL, 0–100, in steps of 5). |
mao | integer | Round 1: minimum acceptable offer (TL). |
responder | JSON | Round 2: the three offers received and the decisions: [{"o": offer in TL, "a": true = accepted}]. |
dictator | number | Round 3: amount given in the dictator game (TL). |
Columns present in every file (14)
row_id | string | Row code. Regenerated at random in every release; it does not identify a person and cannot be matched across releases or experiments. |
experiment | string | Short name of the experiment (URL slug). |
experiment_version | integer | Version of the answer format. For experiments whose format changed, only the current format is published. |
date | YYYY-MM-DD | YYYY-Www | YYYY-MM | Day the answer was given (Istanbul time). If fewer than 5 answers share the same day, language and device, it is coarsened to the ISO week, and to the month if that is still too few. |
date_precision | day | week | month | Precision of the date column. |
lang | tr | en | (boş) | Interface language. Language recording started in the first week of October 2026; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise. |
device | desktop | mobile | tablet | (boş) | Device class reported by the browser (class only; browser details are neither stored here nor published). |
source | site | embed | Where the answer came from: the balabs site or the experiment embedded on another site. The embedding site is not published. |
mode | free | daily | challenge | race | session | (boş) | Play mode in scored experiments: free play, daily round, challenge, race room, experiment session. Empty for unscored experiments and for older answers that did not store it. |
color_vision | normal | rg | by | contrast | (boş) | In color-based experiments, the color vision mode the participant chose: normal, red-green, blue-yellow or high contrast. Stimuli are generated along different axes per mode, so compare within a mode. Empty for other experiments. |
first_play | 1 | Every row is a participant’s first play of this experiment (always 1). Replays are stored only as leaderboard scores and are not part of the open data. |
seen_before | yes | no | unsure | (boş) | Participant’s own report of whether they had seen this experiment or its known answer before (in experiments that ask). |
duration_s | number | Time from the start of the experiment to submitting the answer, in seconds (measured in the browser, 0.1 s). |
play_score | number | Leaderboard score of the first play (scored experiments; defined on the method card). Empty for unscored experiments. |
Exclusion criteria
The server accepts the offer and the minimum as multiples of 5 between 0 and 100; anything else is rejected. Values from the extra rounds are collected in the browser.
- Only each participant's first answer to this experiment; replays are not included.
- Simulated rows, bots, banned and sample accounts are not included.
- Answers before 3 October 2026 are not included (the first day the open data notice was live).
Scoring
This experiment has no leaderboard score. The crowd result is the distribution of offers and minimums and the acceptance rate per offer.
Version notes
- October 2026
The interface language (lang) started being stored with each answer; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise.