Curating social image: Experimental evidence on the value of actions and selfies

Abstract

We manipulate the information subjects can share on the web concerning socially sensitive actions (public good contribution) and visibility (selfie) to determine the effect on social image, as captured by the price subjects demand for publication. The overall conclusion from the experiment is that theory about social reputation can predict subjects' social-signaling behavior. People take costly decisions to "filter" information about themselves (in retrospect) before it is published. We also report results of a more exploratory nature and find that taking a selfie has a strong negative impact on cooperation among frequent selfie takers, but not on other subjects.

Personal Information Disclosure under Competition for Benefits: Is Sharing Caring?

“…Proposer competition prevails to affect the distribution of money in favor of the responder(Roth et al 1991).4Brandts et al (2006) utilize a personality questionnaire to determine allocation power in a distribution task either randomly or based on this questionnaire. Since information is exogenously provided inBrandts et al (2006), their focus lies on how being actively selected affects distributional behavior, while we are interested in the amount of information endogenously provided.5 However,Charness and Gneezy (2008) cannot confirm this result in the ultimatum game.6 In the opposite setting inHolm and Samahita (2018), participants are more likely to subsequently hide their picture if they behaved less generously, but Hermstrüwer and Dickert (2017) do not find such an effect for names.…”

“…1 See Hermstrüwer and Dickert (2017) and Holm and Samahita (2018) for experimental research on how the presence of personal information affects prosocial behavior in light of maintaining a social image, and Gaudeul and Giannetti (2017) on group formation and contribution behavior based on the endogenous provision of personal information. See Bartoš et al (2016) for research on how limited attention can influence the selection of candidates.…”

I care what you think: social image concerns and the strategic revelation of past pro-social behavior

“…Bursztyn et al (2018) show that people pay more for credit cards which can signal high income and that demand for these credit cards drops if they become available to lower income groups. Holm and Samahita (2018) document that people are willing to incur costs to manipulate whether information on their contribution to a public good is published on the web.…”

“…As argued before, if unobservable characteristics drive both pro-social behavior and subsequent information revelation, the observed correlation might be unrelated to social image concerns. For example, people who contributed a lot to the public good in Holm and Samahita (2018) might also have a preference for being transparent. In the present paper, even very pro-social participants are sometimes assigned an unfavorable color.…”

I Care What You Think: Social Image Concerns and the Strategic Revelation of Past Pro-Social Behavior

“…Bursztyn et al (2018) show that people pay more for credit cards which can signal high income and that demand for these credit cards drops if they become available to lower income groups. Holm and Samahita (2018) document that people are willing to incur costs to manipulate whether information on their contribution to a public good is published on the web.…”