Classroom · Economics
Ten coins, one decision, and nobody can stop you.
One of you holds ten coins and decides how many the other gets. They have no move at all — no accepting, no refusing, no comeback. Then the sides swap, and the room sees what was given when nothing had to be.
- In pairs
- About 20 min
- 2 acts
A practice run with fictional students. No real classroom or join code is created.
Try an answer on the phone. Lead the lesson from the screen.
On their phone
You are presenting
Setting up the room…
Lesson deck
Teach it as a ready-made lesson
Hook, how it works, the live game and takeaways. Edit anything.
They cannot say no
A ready-to-teach lesson deck: a hook, how it works, the live game and takeaways for the debrief.
6 slides · 1 activity
What it teaches
The dictator game removes the last strategic excuse: with no rejection to fear, any coins given are given because the giver wanted to give them. Whatever the room's distribution shows — and rooms reliably give something — it is a measurement of altruism and fairness norms with the strategy stripped out, and the cleanest baseline against which to read the ultimatum game's higher offers.
- Altruism
- Fairness norms
Debrief, while the boards are still up
- 01
Nothing could happen to you if you kept all ten. If you gave, why did you?
- 02
How would this exact distribution change if the recipients could have refused? You know the answer from the ultimatum game — what does the difference measure?
- 03
Playing both sides, did receiving change what you gave? Should it have?
How it works
- 01
Add it to your library
Sign up free and pull the activity from Decka's built-in classroom catalog — one click copies it into your own library, ready to run from Decka or inside PowerPoint.
- 02
Students join by QR
Everyone scans from the projector and plays in their phone's browser. No app, no account, nothing to install.
- 03
You run the room
You move the activity phase by phase: collection closes, the boards resolve on the big screen, and the debrief happens while the results are still up.
What is the dictator game?
The dictator game is the ultimatum game with the veto deleted: one player divides a pot, the other simply receives. It barely qualifies as a game — the recipient has no move — and that is precisely its scientific value. In the ultimatum game a generous offer might be fear dressed as fairness, insurance against a refusal that destroys the pot. Here there is nothing to insure against, so whatever is given is a direct reading of social preference: altruism, norm-following, or the discomfort of being watched by one's own conscience.
In this version every student plays both chairs — the sides swap after the first round — and the projector shows the whole distribution of what the room gave when nothing could be done about it. The classic finding is that dictators give less than proposers but more than zero, and the debrief practically runs itself from the board: put this histogram next to the ultimatum game's offers and the gap between them is the price of the veto, measured by your own class.
FAQ
Dictator game questions, answered
Is it really a game if one side has no move?
Barely — and that is the design. Deleting the recipient's move deletes every strategic reason to give, so the giving that survives is a measurement of preference rather than of caution. It is the control condition the ultimatum game needs to be interpretable.
Why do the sides swap?
So the distribution on the board is everyone's twice over — every student decides as a dictator and receives as one — and so the debrief can ask the sharpest version of its question: did being on the receiving end change what you gave?
Are the allocations anonymous?
Decisions happen privately on each phone and the projector shows the room's distribution rather than a who-gave-what list. Anonymity matters here more than in most games — it is what separates generosity from performance.
Do students need an app or an account?
No. Students scan a QR code from the projector (or open a link) and play in their phone's browser. Nothing to install and nothing to sign up for.
Does it work in PowerPoint or Google Slides?
In PowerPoint, yes: open the Decka add-in on a slide and choose the Classroom tile. Google Slides is not supported yet; there you present from Decka itself. Students play from their phones either way.
How many students can play at once?
Up to 50 participants per live activity on the free plan, 150 on Pro, and 300 on Badass.
More economics games to run live
- Closing time at the market
- You are the market
- Who really pays a tax?
- Two factories, one market, and the price you both set
- Two sellers, identical crates, and whoever is cheapest takes the lot
- One of you builds the factory first
- Send it and see what comes back
- One lot, and the best loser sets the price
- Spend the neighbourhood fund
- Four boats and a bay that belongs to nobody
- What is a flat worth to you?
- Three cars on one forecourt
- Tenants and landlords
- All economics activities
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