The Role of Interpersonal Uncertainty in Prosocial Behavior

Anujit Chakraborty () and Luca Henkel
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Anujit Chakraborty: University of California

No 327, ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series from University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany

Abstract: In prosocial decisions, decision-makers are inherently uncertain about how their decisions impact others’ utility – we call this interpersonal uncertainty. We show that people's response to interpersonal uncertainty shapes well-known patterns of prosocial behavior. First, using standard social allocation decisions, we replicate the classic patterns of ingroup favoritism, merit-based fairness ideals, and self-favoring behavior in dictator games. We then show that these patterns also arise in non-social decisions which have no consequences for others and instead solely reflect responses to interpersonal uncertainty. Behavior across social and non-social decisions is highly correlated, and self-reported interpersonal uncertainty predicts behavior in both situations. Moreover, exogenously varying interpersonal uncertainty shifts prosocial behavior in the direction that avoids such uncertainty. Our results quantify how beliefs in the form of interpersonal uncertainty influence prosocial behavior, which we estimate to be of similar importance to social preferences.

Keywords: Prosocial behavior; social preferences; ingroup versus outgroup decisions; dictator games; fairness preferences; interpersonal uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D01 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 198 pages
Date: 2024-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-mac and nep-upt
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https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkdps/ECONtribute_327_2024.pdf First version, 2024 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Role of Interpersonal Uncertainty in Prosocial Behavior (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:327

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