Promises and Guilt

The central question this paper explores is “Do people keep their promise to avoid expectation-based guilt?” Using a novel design wherein we endogenously vary the promisor's expectation of what the promisee expects from him, we find that promisors are heterogeneous in their reasons for keeping their promise. Though we find that behavior of some subjects are consistent with guilt-aversion hypothesis, a larger group of subjects keep their promise regardless of what the promisee expects