Part of why people give is because doing so sends a positive signal about the giver. The intended audience may be another person or the giver herself, yet the relative importance of social-signaling versus self-signaling is unclear. Using the predictions of a model of a preference-signaling decision-maker, I separately test for social-signaling and self-signaling in an experimental dictator game in which, with some probability, the outcome is determined by chance. Lowering the probability that the dictator's choice will count while holding constant the recipient's information has little impact on behavior, but holding constant this probability while increasing the noisiness of the recipient's signal significantly reduces giving. This provides evidence of social-signaling, but not self-signaling and suggests that giving is largely tied to what it says to others, as opposed to the self.
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Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2004.
"Incentives and Prosocial Behavior,"
Working Papers
137, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Discussion Papers in Economics..
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