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

Abstract

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.