The Impact Of Ex Ante Social Comparison on Prosocial Behaviours
This paper studies the motivation underlying dictators’ behaviours and presents a simple model that distinguishes between two classes of motivation: intrinsic and image motivation. The model has two theoretical implications. The first relates to intrinsic motivation, predicting that dictators tend to give more to their counterparts who have a higher sense of worthiness. The second relates to image motivation, predicting that the ex ante knowledge of the presence of rank feedback increases dictators’ willingness to share due to their desire to gain social approval. It further attributes the increase to the fact that dictators’ initial giving decisions are lower than the requirement by social norms for donations. To test them, I design a variant of the dictator game that contains two treatment variables. I test the first prediction by varying the recipient between an anonymous student and a known charity and finding dictators give more to the latter. I test the second by varying the presence of ex ante knowledge of rank feedback and finding the information increases giving. Both experimental findings are consistent with the theoretical predictions. The second finding is novel in that it identifies that dictators may simply be influenced because they know they will be ranked