Moral Self-Concept and Charitable Giving

Last registered on September 04, 2018
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Moral Self-Concept and Charitable Giving
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0001773
Initial registration date
November 07, 2016

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
November 07, 2016, 11:50 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
September 04, 2018, 11:04 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country
United States of America
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Justin Abraham
Affiliation
UC San Diego
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Nick Otis
PI Affiliation
UC Berkeley
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2016-11-07
End date
2016-11-09
Keywords
Welfare
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
This document describes the pre-analysis plan for a randomized experiment examining the relationship between moral self-concept and charitable giving. Using the Amazon Mechanical Turk, respondents will complete an implicit association test (IAT), a questionnaire on support for redistributive polices, negative affect, self-esteem, omission bias; and have an opportunity to give a portion of their earnings to a charitable organization. A randomly assigned treatment group will be told that they posses strong implicit bias, while the control group will remain unaware of their results. The pre-analysis plan outlines our hypotheses, schedule of tasks, and empirical strategy. In order to guarantee transparency and bind ourselves from “fishing for results” we will pre-register the program producing our main results along with this pre-analysis plan.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Abraham, Justin and Nick Otis. 2018. "Moral Self-Concept and Charitable Giving." AEA RCT Registry. September 04. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.1773-3.0
Former Citation
Abraham, Justin and Nick Otis. 2018. "Moral Self-Concept and Charitable Giving." AEA RCT Registry. September 04. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/1773/history/33873
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2016-11-07
Intervention End Date
2016-11-09

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
To test our primary hypotheses, we analyze the treatment effect on the following outcomes.
1. Percent of windfall donated to charity
2. Support for affirmative action score
3. Support for redistribution score
4. Trolley problem choice
We also analyze the following outcomes as manipulation checks of the treatment.
1. Negative affect score
2. Self-esteem response
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
This study investigates the effect of moral self-concept on charitable giving. We experimentally manipulate moral self-concept by randomly assigning half of respondents into the treatment group to receive an interpretation of their IAT results, emphasizing participants implicit racial bias. The control group will receive confirmation of completion of the IAT without results. Revealing to respondents a potentially unacknowledged implicit bias acts as a negative shock to moral self- concept.
In addition to the IAT manipulation, we overlay a second stage of randomization when soliciting explicit racism. A random half of the sample will be asked “Are you racist?” while the other half will skip this item. We will explore heterogeneity of the treatment effect by being primed to explicitly consider racist attitudes and identity.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Qualtrics
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
140
Sample size: planned number of observations
140
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
70 control 70 treatment
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Princeton University
IRB Approval Date
2016-08-10
IRB Approval Number
0000007785
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Moral Self-Concept and Charitable Giving: Pre-Analysis Plan

MD5: 0587b8a3952df4b0cca55d2fea4e1c41

SHA1: 3e408309423d748e25699c1e12615116fa6827b9

Uploaded At: November 07, 2016

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials