ReviewProsocial behavior and reputation: When does doing good lead to looking good?
Section snippets
Context
This article examines how people judge those who act generously, contribute to charity, or engage in prosocial behavior.1
Motives matter
While actors are often praised for their good deeds, there isn't a direct connection between doing a good deed and receiving credit for it. Rather, observers care deeply about a prosocial actor's underlying motives: did the actor really care about helping others, or were they motivated — at least in part — by a desire to help themself?
Theories of costly signaling argue that observers judge the motives of others by the extent to which they are willing to sacrifice to accomplish a goal [8,9].
Motive ambiguity and do-gooder derogation
Although people care deeply about the motives of do-gooders, motives are difficult to verify. This leaves observers with flexibility to judge actors however they wish. Anecdotally, it seems that when observers feel motivated to disparage, they do not need to draw on much evidence. Simply saying that an actor wanted to improve his or her reputation or that a do-gooder is ‘smug’ may often be enough to discredit their good deeds. Such cases have in common an element of ‘observer wiggle room’
Are emotions selfish?
The logic of altruism suggests that any selfish incentive should be sufficient to taint a selfless act. Is this true for emotional incentives such as feeling a ‘warm glow’ from performing a good deed?
Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have all argued that emotional reasons for giving are self-gratifying, and therefore ought to be met with suspicion [30, 31, 32]. However, laypeople hold a more positive view of the role of emotions in prosocial behavior. Whereas observers discount
Generosity and self-promotion
Doing good can only improve an actor's reputation if others know about it. Yet, advertising one's generosity is a risky proposition. There exist strong norms that good deeds should be anonymous, and those who tell others about their generosity are often seen as disingenuous self-promoters [42••, 43, 44, 45].
Talking about one's generosity sends two opposing signals. It communicates that a good deed has been performed, which signals selflessness, but it also suggests the actor may want credit for
Little credit for impact and effectiveness
If the goal of donating to charity is to help others, then individuals should presumably receive more credit when their good deeds achieve more benefits. But, at least descriptively, this does not seem to be the case. Rather, charitable credit is much more sensitive to how much an actor gains or sacrifices while doing a good deed than how much the act benefits others [11,12,50,51].2
Obligations to personal relations
One complicating factor that affects how actors are judged by others concerns whether they are donating to a cause that benefits a close personal relation. Recent theories of morality suggest that people see others as obligated to help close personal relations over distant strangers [64,65]. Despite these obligations, or perhaps because of them, prosocial actors are afforded less credit when they donate to causes that benefit close others, doing so is seen as relatively selfish compared to
Future directions: strengthening norms around giving?
The research reviewed here examines how individual do-gooders are judged by observers. However, some of the most challenging questions concern how to use reputational incentives to strengthen norms around giving. Indeed, if one major reason why individuals do good deeds is to reap reputational rewards [51], then how can we use what we know about the psychology of moral credit to engender a ‘culture of giving’?
Currently, societal norms about how much people ought to sacrifice and which causes
Conflict of interest statement
Nothing declared.
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