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Unobserved Altruism: How Social-And Self-Signaling ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Association for Consumer Research, University of Minnesota Duluth, 115 Chester Park, 31 West College Street Duluth, MN 55812 Unobserved Altruism: How Social- and Self-Signaling Motivations Shape Willingness to Donate Jennifer Savary, University of Arizona, USA Kelly Goldsmith, Vanderbilt University, USA Although public recognition is usually thought to increase donations, we show that an audience sometimes suppresses giving. This occurs because consumers prefer to give when they can interpret their choice as a genuine signal of altruism. However, when reputational benefits of giving are salient, that self-signal is diluted, and donation likelihood decreases. [to cite]: Jennifer Savary and Kelly Goldsmith (2018) ,"Unobserved Altruism: How Social- and Self-Signaling Motivations Shape Willingness to Donate", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 46, eds. Andrew Gershoff, Robert Kozinets, and Tiffany White, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 270-302. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/2411956/volumes/v46/NA-46 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/. Can You Trust Yourself? Self-Deception through Self-Signaling Chairs: Rima Touré-Tillery, Northwestern University, USA Jennifer Savary, University of Arizona, USA Paper #1: Unobserved Altruism: How Social- And Self-Signaling agnostic, and hence behave more morally. However, as Paper #3 Motivations Shape Willingness to Donate shows, consumers can also deceive themselves by engaging in uneth- Jennifer Savary, University of Arizona, USA ical behaviors, using dishonest means to augment the self-concept. Kelly Goldsmith, Vanderbilt University, USA Finally, Paper #4 takes a step back to look at an often overlooked, but critical prerequisite of self-deception through self-signaling: a Paper #2: No Self to Spare: How the Cognitive Structure of the developed self-schema. Self Influences Moral Behavior Together these papers explore the provocative possibility that Rima Touré-Tillery, Northwestern University, USA we cannot always trust information, even when that information is Alysson E. Light, University of the Sciences, USA a self-signal derived from our own actions. Across papers, we will Paper #3: Cheating Your Self: Diagnostic Self-Deceptive discuss how consumers often ignore, or perhaps even sacrifice de- Cheating for Intrinsic Rewards sired outcomes to maximize preferred self-attributions. In addition, Sara Loughran Dommer, Georgia Tech, USA these papers identify a range of strategies consumers use, either con- Nicole Verrochi Coleman, University of Pittsburgh, USA sciously or not, to allow themselves to make choices inconsistent Paper #4: How the Unconstructed Identity Relieves Consumers with their long-term goals. As consumer researchers cast a wide net of Identity-Relevant Consumption to investigate when to trust and when to doubt, this session provides Tracy Rank-Christman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a novel perspective on deception, specifically, when the source of USA deception of information comes from within ourselves. Lauren Poupis, Iona College, USA Unobserved Altruism: How Social- And Self-Signaling SESSION OVERVIEW Motivations Shape Willingness to Donate “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.” EXTENDED ABSTRACT – Leonardo da Vinci The question of what motivates people to donate to charitable causes has generated a great deal of discussion. In the current re- Ongoing reports of “fake news” have made us question if we search we examine two such motivations; the desire to receive pub- can trust the information we receive from news outlets and social lic recognition and reputational benefits, known as a social-signaling media. Yet, an even more worrisome question is, can we trust our- motive (Ariely, Bracha, and Meier 2009), and the desire to see one- selves? This symposium investigates various ways in which people self as genuinely altruistic, known as a self-signaling motive (Tou- deceive themselves to maintain a positive self-concept. ré-Tillery and Fishbach 2012, 2015self-diagnostic actions; Savary, People often use their choices to signal information about them- Goldsmith, and Dhar 2015). A key factor that distinguishes social- selves to others (Berger and Heath 2007, Escalas and Bettman 2005). and self-signaling is the intended audience: a social signal conveys Recent work on self-signaling indicates that people also use their information about one’s traits and values to an external audience, choices to signal information to themselves about desired traits and whereas a self-signal informs oneself (Bodner and Prelec, 2002)even values (Gneezy et al. 2012, Savary et al. 2015, Toure-Tillery and when the action has no causal impact on these traits and abilities. We Fishbach 2012; 2015). For example, a person might be more willing discuss some of the odd things that happen when self-signaling is to donate to charity when doing so will make her feel “generous,” introduced into an otherwise rational conception of action. We em- or to choose a piece of fruit (vs. candy) when doing so will make ploy a signaling game perspective in which the diagnostic signals are her feel “health-conscious.” People tend to cheat at tasks when they an endogenous part of the equilibrium choice. We are interested (1. won’t have to label themselves as “dishonest” (Bryan, Adams, and Often, these motives align, and a choice will signal the same infor- Monin 2013), but toe the line when cheating would force them to mation to either an internal or an external audience. As a result, some question their integrity (Mazar, Amir and Ariely 2008). researchers have wondered if social-signaling and self-signaling However, the diagnostic signal of these choices is arguably motives are separable (Grossman 2015). In the current article, we merely an illusion: it does not change the objective outcome of the attempt to empirically disentangle these motives in the context of action. Donating $2 will help others irrespective of how generous the charitable giving. We find that the two signaling motives can com- donor feels, and fruit is healthy, whether the choice context encour- pete, and even inhibit each other. ages a self-attribution of “health-consciousness” or not. Cheating is Our proposal builds on two related ideas: (1) that the intrinsic dishonest, whether the cheat sees herself as dishonest or not. Thus, it motivation to engage in a behavior can be “crowded-out” by extrin- seems consumers are readily able to deceive themselves into believ- sic incentives (Gneezy, Meier, and Rey-Biel, 2011)engagement- ing the signal from these strategic behaviors, which in turn influences contingent, completion-contingent, and performance-contingent re- their choices. wards signifi-cantly undermined free-choice intrinsic motivation (d The first two papers in this session explore how consumers de- = -0.40, -0.36, and -0.28, respectively and (2) recent findings that ceive themselves by strategically engaging in positive moral behav- suggested that people believe a charitable act should be free from the iors. Paper #1 finds that consumers donate more when the context potential taint of self-interest (Barasch, Levine, Berman, and Small, allows them to label their action as genuine altruism, which, surpris- 2014; Berman, Levine, Barasch, and Small, 2015; Lin-Healy and ingly occurs when the donation choice is private. Paper #2 indicates Small, 2012, 2013; Newman and Cain, 2014)or advertise, their good that when consumers mentally represent their self-concept as high deeds to others. Seven studies investigate how bragging about proso- (vs. low) in overlap, they tend to see their actions as more self-di- cial behavior affects perceived generosity. The authors propose that Advances in Consumer Research 270 Volume 46, ©2018 Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 46) / 271 bragging conveys information about an actor’s good deeds, leading No Self to Spare: How the Cognitive Structure of the Self to an attribution of generosity. However, bragging also signals a self- Influences Moral Behavior ish motivation (a desire for credit. Our main proposition is that that reminding people of potential EXTENDED ABSTRACT public recognition can undermine donation rates, because when the It is no secret that people are motivated to maintain a positive social-signaling benefits of donating are made salient, it reduces an self-concept (Gao, Wheeler, and Shiv, 2009; Schlenker, 1985; Steele, individual’s ability to infer that their choice to donate is a genuine 1988; Prelec and Bodner, 2003). In particular, people will do the signal of altruism, and thus dilutes the value of the self-signal. We “right” thing when their actions seem most diagnostic for inferences expect this to occur even though the self-signal of altruism is un- about the self (i.e., self-diagnostic), but relax their standards other- related to the actual benefit the charities might receive, consistent wise (Touré-Tillery and Fishbach 2015). Many factors can elicit the with the notion of self-deception through self-signaling. perception that a choice is not self-diagnostic. For example, Touré- We tested this prediction using real and hypothetical choices. In Tillery and Fishbach (2012) found that people were more likely to all studies, some people are asked to donate in a private, unobserved cheat in the middle (vs. beginning/end) of a sequence of actions, be- choice. Others read that their donation will be observed, and that cause they perceive the middle (vs. beginning/end) as less diagnos- they may receive social-signaling benefits for their choice. Consis- tic for self-inferences. Within the same perspective, Bryan, Walton, tently, people are more likely to donate in the private conditions (see Rogers, and Dweck (2011) found that when an action was explicitly table 1 for all experimental results). Mediation analysis indicates that linked to the undesirable identity of “cheater” (“don’t be a cheater” this occurs because the public choice is a relatively weaker self-sig- vs.
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