Wallflowers: Experimental Evidence of an Aversion to Standing Out

An extensive literature on reputation signaling in prosocial settings has focused on an intrinsic desire for positive reputation. In our paper, we provide experimental evidence that some individuals are averse to both positive and negative reputation and will therefore respond to visibility by signaling that they are an “average altruism type” relative to their audience. We formalize our hypotheses about “wallflower” behavior in a theoretical model. Our experimental results show that instead of uniformly increasing contributions, visibility draws contributions towards the middle of others’ contributions. As a result, visibility is associated with higher levels of giving only when in scenarios where others are giving a large amount. We also observe heterogeneity in reputation concerns: wallflower behavior is particularly strong for women and can be observed in several different settings. Jones: Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. Email: [email protected]. Corresponding author. Linardi: Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. Email: [email protected] Phone: (412) 648-7650 Fax: (412) 648-7641 We thank Lise Vesterlund for very helpful discussions. We also thank Jim Andreoni, Erin Krupka, Michael LeGower, Maria Patricia Recalde, and participants at the Pittsburgh Experimental Brownbag, the ESA 2011 meeting (Tuscon), the 2011 ARNOVA meeting (Toronto), the 2012 Workshop on Social Dimension of Organizations, the 2013 Social Dilemma Workshop (Caltech), the CAGE/CMPO Conference on Generosity and Wellbeing (Warwick), as well as seminar participants at Universitat Bonn, IUPUI, University of Michigan (STIET), and University of Massachusets-Amherst for helpful comments. We thank GSPIA for their financial support (SL) and Kate Morris for her careful reading of the draft.