Descriptive Norms and Guilt Aversion

Anastasia Danilov, Kiryl Khalmetski and Dirk Sliwka

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2021, vol. 191, issue C, 293-311

Abstract: It has been argued that guilt aversion (the desire to meet others’ expectations) and the social norm compliance (the desire to act similarly to other individuals in the same situation) are important drivers of human behavior. However, as we show in a theoretical model, these two motives are empirically indistinguishable when only one signal (either the expectation of a person affected by the choice or a signal about the descriptive norm) is revealed as each of these signals transmit information on the other benchmark. We address this problem by running an experiment in which signals for both benchmarks are revealed simultaneously. We find that both types of information affect dictator transfers in a one-shot game, yet the information about the behavior of others has a stronger effect than the disclosed recipient’s expectation. The effect of the recipient’s expectation is non-monotonic and becomes negative for very high expectations. We provide further evidence for the importance of guilt aversion in a second experiment where we display the recipient’s expectation and the expectation of a randomly picked recipient of another dictator.

Keywords: Guilt aversion; Social norms; Conformity; Dictator game; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D83 D84 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:191:y:2021:i:c:p:293-311

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.09.002

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