Share and share alike? Gender-pairing, personality, and cognitive ability as determinants of giving

We conduct dictator game experiments in which women and men are allowed to split $10 with a completely unknown person or a person of known gender. Subjects also complete personality and cognitive tests. We find that (a) gender information significantly affects giving only in the case of women, who give systematically less to women than to men and persons of unknown gender; (b) largely on account of this difference, women give less than men on average, although the difference is not statistically significant; and (c) giving is significantly explained, especially for women, by personality measures and the cognition score. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.