Hawks and Doves: Seizing Pecuniary Benefits in a Conflict Situation

Abstract

Dominance and submissiveness can be crucial in deciding allocation of resources in bargaining. This research study examines entitlement and allocation of limited resources in the framework of Hawk-Dove game, involving face-to-face communication in a low stake four person bargaining experiment, in which the stake is divided into four predefined unequal shares. Our findings reveal that entitlement to a share is not driven by concern for equity rather by perception of dominance of the players. Hawkish behavior leads individuals to secure higher payoffs in bargaining if the players agree on one of the twentyfour possible distributions of the predefined shares that are also the Nash equilibria of the game. There is no evidence that positive or negative contribution to the divisible pool affects contestants’ payoff. Male groups performed more efficiently than female groups under time pressure in bargaining phase and were better in circumventing an impasse. We compare our results to the results of a study on the game show DIVIDED by Dolder et al. (2015) which is an analysis of a similar experiment that analyzes bargaining in high stake situation. The contrast in results of the two studies reveals that drivers of the bargaining outcomes alter with differing levels of stake size