A field experiment (N = 113,047 participants) manipulated two factors in the sale of souvenir photos. First, some customers saw a traditional fixed price, whereas others could pay what they wanted (including $0). Second, approximately half of the customers saw a variation in which half of the revenue went to charity. At a standard fixed price, the charitable component only slightly increased demand, as similar studies have also found. However, when participants could pay what they wanted, the same charitable component created a treatment that was substantially more profitable. Switching from corporate social responsibility to what we term shared social responsibility works in part because customized contributions allow customers to directly express social welfare concerns through the purchasing of material goods.

Building on previous research in economics and psychology, we propose that the costliness of initial prosocial behavior positively influences whether that behavior leads to consistent future behaviors. We suggest that costly prosocial behaviors serve as a signal of prosocial identity and that people subsequently behave in line with that self-perception. In contrast, costless prosocial acts do not signal much about one's prosocial identity, so subsequent behavior is less likely to be consistent and may even show the reductions in prosocial behavior associated with licensing. The results of a laboratory experiment and a large field experiment converge to support our account. This paper was accepted by Brad Barber, Teck Ho, and Terrance Odean, special issue editors.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact

The significance of music-induced thrills or chills was explored in 3 experiments (N = 223). Specifically, the ability of antecedent (priming) stimuli in different modalities and aesthetic domains (national anthems, stories, architectural objects, paintings) to increase the participants’ thrills responsiveness to music by Rachmaninoff and Haydn was examined. In addition, the differential effects of having or not having experienced thrills on the participants’ subsequent willingness to donate blood, and on their mood and self-concept, were tested. It was found that while the antecedent stimuli in different modalities could themselves induce thrills in a predictable manner, these priming stimuli, and the thrills they elicited, had relatively weak effects on the thrills subsequently induced by the Rachmaninoff and Haydn pieces. The measures of altruism, self-concept, and mood were not affected by either the antecedent variables or the thrills experience. Thrills may often accompany profound aesthetic experiences and provide their physiological underpinning, yet themselves be of limited psychological significance.