Ambiguity Attitudes: Self – Other Differences and Altruism

This thesis investigates how ambiguity attitudes differ in situations where individuals must decide for themselves versus for an anonymous stranger, in the loss domain. Furthermore, it looks into how altruism affects this self-other difference. Self-other differences have been well-documented for risk attitudes. For ambiguity attitudes, however, it is still underexplored. Given the similarity of these two kinds of uncertainty, it is expected to find differences in ambiguity attitudes as well. This thesis will focus on the loss domain, which, contrarily to the gain domain, has not been researched before. On an aggregate level, there is no significant discrepancy found in ambiguity attitudes in the two contexts. However, there is individual heterogeneity found. Circa two-third of the subjects show different ambiguity attitudes. Most of these subjects act more ambiguity averse when deciding for another. Altruism had no significant influence on the discrepancy in ambiguity attitudes. Nevertheless, it was found that equally-oriented subjects are more likely to make the same decisions in self-other situations.