I Care What You Think: Social Image Concerns and the Strategic Revelation of Past Pro-Social Behavior

Arbeitspapier

This article studies whether people want to control which information on their own past pro-social behavior is revealed to other people. Participants in an experiment are assigned a color which depends on their own past pro-sociality. They can then spend money to increase or decrease the probability with which their color is revealed to another participant. The data show that participants are more likely to reveal colors that have a more favorable informational content. This pattern is not found in a control treatment in which colors are randomly assigned and thus have no informational content. Regression analysis confirms these findings, also when controlling for the initial pro-social decision. These results complement the existing empirical evidence, and suggests that people strategically manipulate the pro-social impression they make on other people, even though a favorable reputation has no immediate material benefits.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 7497

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: General ; Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles ; Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty: General
• Subject: social signaling ; trust ; altruism

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): von Siemens, Ferdinand A.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2019

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/198857
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET