Self-Promoted Altruism: Looking Bad by Doing Good?

Abstract: We experimentally test whether the need to actively self-promote one's own prosocialness for others to become aware of it has an adverse effect on prosocial behavior. In an experiment design resembling that of Ariely, Bracha and Meier (2009), participants could demonstrate prosocialness by engaging in a real-effort task to collect money for charity. We find that self-promotion in general was considered negatively among participants, but cannot support our hypothesis that it adversely affects prosocial behavior in our experiment setting. Our results weakly suggest that females are less likely to engage in self-promotion and that a need to self-promote affects females' prosocial efforts more negatively than males'. The results point to the direction that social-image concerns may be less important than previously thought in the "Click for Charity"-setting. In light of this, we critically discuss the findings of Ariely, Bracha and Meier (2009) and also suggest improved methods for future research.