game 3 of 16 · measures generosity
Dictator Game
Inside TELLS it's “The Split” — you have $10, a stranger has $5, and all the power is yours. Give, keep — or take theirs.
part of the full 16-game test · about 12 minutes
What the Dictator Game is
You hold $10, a stranger holds $5, and you have total power: give them some of yours, keep everything — or take theirs. No consequences, no reputation, nobody watching. The dictator game is a cornerstone of behavioral economics precisely because it strips away every strategic reason to be nice.
What it measures
Whatever you do here is the closest a game gets to your unedited character. Giving when nothing forces you measures real altruism; taking when nothing stops you measures exactly what it looks like. TELLS scores the transfer into generosity, with a fairness component for whether you crossed the line from keeping to taking.
You keep your chips close. Why hand them out?
You'll share — once you've seen it come back around.
You give first and trust it'll even out. Often it doesn't, and you give anyway.
Why hiring assessments use it
Allocation tasks like this one feed 'generosity' and 'fairness' factors in gamified hiring tools. They're hard to fake under time pressure: candidates optimising for the 'right' answer still hesitate measurably before doing it.
TELLS is an independent project — not affiliated with pymetrics, Harver, or any employer's assessment. This is the fun version.
Archetypes this game exposes
The generosity axis is load-bearing for these three.
See what your play says about you
This game is 1 of 16. Play them all and the engine reads you onto 1 of 18 archetypes — free, sharable, no account.
Find my archetype