Nice to You, Nicer to Me: Does Self-Serving Generosity Diminish the Reciprocal Response?

Daniel Woods and Maroš Servátka

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Reciprocity has been shown to be sensitive to perceived intentions, however, not much is known about the intensity of reciprocal responses to the precise nature of those intentions. For example, a person can strategically appear to be kind while being self-serving or can be selflessly (genuinely) kind. Do these two intentions elicit different reciprocal reactions? We propose a conjecture that self-serving but generous actions diminish the positively reciprocal response, compared to selfless generous actions. We classify actions that increase a recipient’s maximum payoff, but by less than the giver’s maximum payoff, as being self-serving generous actions, while classifying actions that increase a recipient’s maximum payoff by more than the giver’s as selfless generous actions. We hypothesize that selfless generous actions are considered more generous than self-serving generous actions, and that self-serving generous actions will therefore result in a diminished reciprocal response. We test this conjecture using two novel experimental designs. We find some evidence that subjects perceive self-serving generous actions as being less generous than selfless generous actions, but no empirical support for our conjecture on the diminished reciprocal response.

Keywords: Reciprocity; generosity; self-serving; genuine; experiment; Revealed Altruism; lost wallet game; investment game (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C7 C72 C9 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-09-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-hpe
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Related works:
Journal Article: Nice to you, nicer to me: Does self-serving generosity diminish the reciprocal response? (2019)
Working Paper: Nice to You, Nicer to Me: Does Self-Serving Generosity Diminish the Reciprocal Response? (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:82111

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