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i study philanthropy both what causes people to behave generously and how generous acts
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are perceived by others especially in light of the fact that oftentimes when people behave generously
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they reap some benefits in return and those benefits come in different forms so we receive tax breaks when we give to
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charity we earn reputational benefits for being perceived as a generous person which is valued in our society
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and we reap emotional benefits feels good to help others and so this is kind of a contradiction
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because altruism generosity in its purest form is supposed to be selfless and yet we
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benefit from it in this paper we look at what happens when people brag about or advertise
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their good deeds to others we ask the question of whether and when bragging is effective
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and the answer is really that it depends on the one hand bragging signals a selfish motive for behaving generously
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it signals that perhaps the person behave generously not because they're truly a good person who cares
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but because they wanted to earn credit for for being a generous person and so in that sense bragging shouldn't
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help your reputation if others realize that or others perceive you as doing it for a
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ulterior motive on the other hand bragging is just marketing it's providing information if
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nobody knows that you did a good good deed then you don't get any credit at all and so to the extent that
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bragging provides new information about your generous behavior bragging should enhance your reputation
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as a generous person so through a series of controlled experiments we're able to
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tease apart or disentangle the different sorts of effects that bragging has on a person's reputation and the key
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finding is that bragging only pays in situations for which bragging provides new news so if a person's reputation is
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not so generous bragging can help by providing information that the person has behaved
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generously but if a person's reputation is already generous then bragging doesn't provide any new
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information it only signals that the motive isn't pure that the motive is is to improve one's reputation
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so we found this pattern in a number of ways in one study that i like in particular
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we described a person who volunteered for a community service organization and then in some cases they subsequently
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posted on facebook telling their social network that they had done this volunteering
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now one thing we did in the study was we varied whether this individual was an investment banker or was a social
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worker now investment bankers don't have the kindest warmest reputation in fact they're perceived to
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be pretty selfish whereas social workers are perceived to be generous warm people
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and so somewhat surprisingly we found that bragging actually paid for the investment banker
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by providing new information so when the investment banker brags people learn that in fact
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he's a bit generous after all whereas the social worker has already thought to
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be generous and so bragging doesn't pay for the in the case of the social worker
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well public displays of generosity are ubiquitous nearly every new building on a
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university campus hospitals and in the arts is emblazoned with the name of some illustrious
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donor who's signaling to the world just how generous they are now this these forms of boasts are not
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just the purview of the super rich in fact if you look around on social media you'll note just how pervasive
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bragging is so people advertise or brag about their achievements they brag about their relationships and
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they brag about their good deeds and so our research sheds some light on whether this is actually strategically
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smart or in what cases it's strategically smart to brag and what we find is that it makes sense to brag in
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the cases for which bragging provides new news about a person's character if a person's reputation is already
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thought to be generous then bragging fails to to provide any benefit and only signals a potentially
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selfish motive this research has other implications as well so a reluctance to brag by some
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individuals may actually be a hindrance for fundraising a very generous person may want to keep
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their donations and other good acts private so that it's they can signal to themselves that their motives are pure
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however we know that one of the best ways to fundraise is by telling other people of
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of your own donations when you tell a friend about your donations that inspires them to donate as well and
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so this really gets at the conflict between doing the most good possible and appearing the most good
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so beyond studying how selfish motives are perceived by others i also investigate how selfish
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incentives influence altruistic behavior in a recent study we asked people to make a pitch on video
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advocating a co for a cause that they care about now after they agreed to do this we gave
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some of them a financial incentive we told them that for every ten dollars donated
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based on somebody watching their video we would also send them ten dollars in return
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other participants receive no such incentive and what we thought was really informative
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we found that donors gave less money on average when they viewed a video made by
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somebody who had received a financial incentive and this is because even though they
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were unaware that the incentive exists they can detect the sincerity and the self-interest of an incentive
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taints the person's ability to convey sincerity in their pitch you