To identify dual-process reasoning in giving, we exposed experimental participants making a charitable donation to vivid images of the charity’s beneficiaries in order to stimulate affect. We hypothesized that the effect of an affective manipulation on giving would be larger when we...

To identify dual process reasoning in giving, we exposed experimental participants making a charitable donation to vivid images of the charity's beneficiaries in order to stimulate affect. We hypothesized that the effect of an affective manipulation on giving is larger when we simultaneously put...

Self-signaling theory argues that individuals partly behave prosocially to create or uphold a favorable self-image. To study self-signaling theory, we investigate whether increasing self-image concerns affects charitable giving. In our experiment subjects divide 20 euros between themselves and a...

We experimentally investigate strategic communication about the impact of prosocial actions, which is central to policy debates about foreign aid or the environment. In our experiment, a "sender" receives an informative but noisy signal about the impact of a charitable donation. She then sends a...

Social preferences depend on emotional states like compassion and anger. Since emotions are fleeting and subject to manipulation, they may generate demand for commitment. We investigate the use of commitment strategies in an online experiment (n = 1, 400), where subjects decide to watch or avoid...

Part of why people give is because doing so sends a positive signal about the giver. The intended audience may be another person or the giver herself, yet the relative importance of social-signaling versus self-signaling is unclear. Using the predictions of a model of a preference-signaling...