Wallflowers Doing Good: Field and Lab Evidence of Heterogeneity in Reputation Concerns

An extensive literature on reputation signaling has focused on the desire for positive reputation. In our paper we provide field and lab evidence that some individuals are averse to any form of reputation; this aversion correlates with gender in a prosocial setting. We formalize our hypotheses of these “wallflower” types in a theoretical model. Our experimental results are consistent with the model’s prediction that wallflowers will deflect unwanted attention by signaling that they are an “average altruism type” relative to their audience. Our findings suggest caution in using public observation to incentivize intrinsically motivated behavior among females.