IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pdn/dispap/34.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Don't patronize me! An Experiment on Rejecting Paternalistic Help

Author

Listed:
  • Silvia Lübbecke

    (University of Paderborn)

  • Wendelin Schnedler

    (University of Paderborn)

Abstract

Children sometimes reject help that they have not asked for only to do the work themselves. Here, we study whether adults also reject such paternalistic help and distinguish between three possible reasons. The person rejecting help may want to preserve her self-esteem, signal her autonomy or signal her cognitive competence to the interfering party (paternalist). By varying the information available to the paternalist, we can isolate these three effects. If all three effects can operate, a substantial fraction rejects paternalistic help. Excluding the opportunity to signal cognitive competence or autonomy to the paternalist through rejection leads to a sizable (but not statistically significant) reduction of rejections.

Suggested Citation

  • Silvia Lübbecke & Wendelin Schnedler, 2018. "Don't patronize me! An Experiment on Rejecting Paternalistic Help," Working Papers Dissertations 34, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:pdn:dispap:34
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://groups.uni-paderborn.de/wp-wiwi/RePEc/pdf/dispap/DP34.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    self-esteem; image concerns; autonomy; cognitive competence; paternalism; self-determination;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pdn:dispap:34. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: WP-WiWi-Info (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fwpadde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.