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When letter writing increases kindness: Regulating emotions or activating pro-social thinking?

Author

Listed:
  • Wendelin Schnedler

    (University of Paderborn)

  • Nina Lucia Stephan

    (University of Paderborn)

Abstract
Previous experiments suggest a chain of unkindness: unkindly treated people pass on unkind behavior to an innocent third person. As a remedy, it has been proposed that the unkindly treated person writes a letter to the unkind person. Indeed, unkindly treated subjects who were writing letters have been found to be more kind to an innocent third person than unkindly treated subjects that were not writing letters. As an explanation, it has been suggested that letter writing helps writers to `close the case' and thereby regulate their emotions. We propose an alternative explanation for this behavior: letter writing might activate more pro-social modes of thinking - irrespective of how the letter writer was treated before. Here, we examine how letter writing affects kindly treated subjects and compare this effect to that on unkindly treated subjects using an experiment. We find that letter writing increases giving to an innocent third person in both groups, suggesting that letter writing activates more pro-social modes of thinking.

Suggested Citation

  • Wendelin Schnedler & Nina Lucia Stephan, 2019. "When letter writing increases kindness: Regulating emotions or activating pro-social thinking?," Working Papers Dissertations 29, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:pdn:dispap:29
    as

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    File URL: http://groups.uni-paderborn.de/wp-wiwi/RePEc/pdf/dispap/DP29.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    pro-sociality; chain of unkindness; letter writing; experimental economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

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