Image Concerns In Social Decisions

Last registered on July 18, 2019

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Image Concerns In Social Decisions
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0002798
Initial registration date
April 05, 2018

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
April 06, 2018, 5:18 PM EDT

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

Last updated
July 18, 2019, 11:31 AM EDT

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
NHH- Norges Handelshøyskolen

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2018-03-29
End date
2018-04-13
Secondary IDs
Abstract
By making decisions individuals reveal a part of their characters and dispositions to others and to
self. Finding an answer to why people refrain themselves from the actions which yield more utility
for them and engage in other-benefiting ones by bearing the cost (even pecuniary) is one of the topics
takes place in psychology and economics literature. Both fields provided explanations by using extrinsic
& intrinsic motivations, such as difference and inequality aversion, guilt aversion, the taste of
fairness and image concerns. People vote, engage in voluntary activities, make donations, and in the
experiments usually, give and share with others even when they don’t have to. Evidence from experiments
shows that when there are situational excuses, altruistic behavior decreases substantially.These
findings support the idea that the main driver of the altruistic decisions may not be a desire for fair/
altruistic outcomes but a desire not to appear bad either to oneself or to others. In other words, the
diagnostic utility of being seen as a good/fair person by self and by others might be the main motivation
behind other-regarding preferences. While experimental evidence confirms the importance
and effects of image concerns, to the best of my knowledge there is not enough evidence to see the
robustness of social decisions under these image concerns particularly in reciprocal decisions which
are richer in the moral context.The present experiment aims to capture whether if the estimated effects of image concerns can
be generalized to all social decisions by using a manipulated trust(investment) game.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Ay, Fehime Ceren. 2019. "Image Concerns In Social Decisions." AEA RCT Registry. July 18. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.2798-2.0
Former Citation
Ay, Fehime Ceren. 2019. "Image Concerns In Social Decisions." AEA RCT Registry. July 18. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/2798/history/50260
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2018-04-06
Intervention End Date
2018-04-13

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Social decisions under ignorance and information, willingness to get informed and to stay ignorant
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The main outcomes will show the effects of situational excuses and the desire to stay uninformed when being altruistic is costly.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The present experiment aims to capture whether if the estimated effects of image concerns can
be generalized to all social decisions by using a manipulated trust(investment) game. The effects of
the moral excuses will be observed through the actions of second movers who are randomly assigned
to roles and endowments and given the chance to hide information about the consequences of their
action.
Experimental Design Details
Participants are matched into pairs and informed that they’re playing with another person in the
same room. Endowments will be randomly distributed as 15 or 35 ECUs. All the players will be
informed that there’s an equal chance for both endowment levels for them and their partners.
In the first treatment, Hidden Information treatment from DWK(2006) will be implemented to
the trust game setup. Players won’t be aware of their partners’ endowment levels. Player 1 will
be informed that Player 2 can reveal information on Player 1’s initial endowment level. If Player 1
sends 10ECU to Player 2, Player 2 will make a decision on whether to learn Player 1’s endowment or
not. Following that decision a BDM auction will take place to implement the revealing information
decision.
In the other two treatment games, the information on partner’s endowment won’t be given to the
players and again Player 2s make decision on revealing Player 1’s endowment level or not. . The
treatments will be focused on the trustee’s behavior on revealing the information about trustor’s endowment
and will compare the willingness to get the information and to stay ignorant. . Design of the
game is very close to Hidden Information in (Dana et al., 2007) with the exception of manipulation
on revealing the information ex-ante and ex-post as in (Grossman and Van Der Weele, 2017).
The timing of the experiment is as follows. At the beginning of each treatment t = 0, subjects
are randomly paired and assigned to the roles as trustors and trustees and to the endowment levels as
high and low. In t = 1 trustors decide to send 10ECUs or nothing to the trustees without knowing
the endowment level of their partner. In t = 2 of the hidden information and ex-ante information
treatments trustees decide to get the information I = 0;1 about the trustors’ endowment and if they
don’t want to get that information they will attend in a BDM auction(b = 1). The trustors who want
to get information won’t take place in the auction(b = 0). The bids in the BDM auction will give the
continuous measure of willingnes to pay of to avoid information for each individual, k. That enables
me to see how they value the avoidance. In t = 3 the auction will be resolved and the randomly
chosen price will be announced to trustees. If they win information won’t be revealed and the price of
avoidance k will be charged from trustees. If they lose information will be revealed and nothing will
be charged. In t = 4, trustees make the distribution decision which is “a” in the self-signalling model
and changes the xi􀀀xj. This decision is effected by the altruism level of the trustee q. Following the
proposed models with that decision the trustee get a signal about her own type and the psychological
utility of the signaled type is mq. Therefore, avoiding the information helps trustee to maintain her
belief on her own type. On the other hand without the self signalling tool the trustee only decides by
the altruism level of her. Since she knows the possible endowments in the first place even without the
information she suffers from that possibility as in Eq. 2. In t = 5 final payoffs are realized and in t=6
players take place in the post-experiment questionnaire. In the ex-post information treatment, t = 4
change place in the order and goes before t = 2, after making the distribution decision without any
information trustees are asked if they want to get information or not. In addition to the time order in
the ex-ante game, after the auction a revision part will take place in ex-post game. Therefore, in t = 5
after the auction is resolved the player who receive information are asked if they want to revise their
distribution decision. Trustors and trustees will not be informed about the revision part in advance.
And as in the ex-ante treatment in t = 6 the final payoffs are realized and in t = 7 a questionnaire
takes place (see fig.1). The main stages will be explained in a more detailed way in the following
paragraph. Information & Auction In the first treatment, trustees who choose to get the information
will attend an auction to realize that decision. The same mechanism takes place in other treatments
as well: in the ex-ante /ex-post information treatments before/after the distribution decision, trustees
will face a BDM auction to stay ignorant. Trustees will be told that they’re given additional 1ECU
and over that amount they can submit their reservation prices if they want to get the information on
their partner’s endowment, in the second and third treatment they submit reservation prices if they
want to stay ignorant. After trustees submit their reservation prices, a price will be randomly chosen
between 0-1ECU. If the bid is lower than the chosen price that subject loses the auction and don’t
receive/receive the information, if it’s higher then the price will be taken from the subject and will be
informed / ignorance situation will be kept. Not getting the information keeps the trustor’s endowment
and final payoff hidden from the trustee, in the self image model decreases the psychological cost of
that choice and protects the self-image in case of making an unfair decision. In the outcome based
models the information avoidance has no lowering effects on the psychological cost of the decision
since p and 1􀀀 p are known.
Sending Back After receiving the sent amount from the trustor, trustee will make the distribution
decision with/without knowing his partner’s initial endowment.To get a more detailed idea on the
insights of the decisions first order and second order beliefs about the other party’s endowment and
sending/sending back decision will be elicitated.
Revision In all treatments subjects makes conditional decisions on the possible endowment levels
of the trustor. Then, if they get the information in all treatments (if they win the auction in treatment
1 and loose in treatments 2 and 3) that conditional decision will be implemented. If they don’t get the
information they will be asked to make another sending back decision.
Other covariates like demographics, risk behavior, reciprocity etc. will be controlled in the questionairre
by using the survey from Falk et al. (2016).
Depending on the results of this experiment a second part of the idea will be conducted on social
image effects. The self-image model seems to provide a very useful tool to understand social decisions.
If it can be generalized to all social decisions the next step of the experiment will be to see the
different effects of self and social image. In the model multiple self concept is used and it enables
one to interpret the model in social image concept as well. In the self image there are two selves: the
observer and the decision maker. Both are not aware of the type of the player. So the observer self can
easily be interpreted as an other person. Although in the model self and social image seem to have
the same effect, as B´enabou and Tirole (2006) they might be weighted differently in subjects utility.
In short, even when there is no observer other than oneself, individuals engage in altruistic actions
like voting or donating to charities, or avoid information which can possibly hurt their self-image like
feedback on a homework or critics on the supported party etc. The present research idea with the
second part of it intends to see the effects of these image concerns(if any) in social decisions.
Randomization Method
Randomization is done by a computer
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
450 individuals
Sample size: planned number of observations
450 participants for the lab experiment
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
150 participants in each 3 treatment
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
0.6
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Norwegian School of Economics
IRB Approval Date
2018-03-26
IRB Approval Number
N/A
IRB Name
Boğaziçi University
IRB Approval Date
2017-11-16
IRB Approval Number
N/A

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