Emma Edelman Levine

The Braggart’S Dilemma: on the Social Rewards and Penalties of Advertising Prosocial Behavior

People often brag about, or advertise, their good deeds to others. Seven studies investigate how bragging about prosocial behavior affects perceived generosity. The authors propose that bragging conveys information about an actors good deeds, leading to an attribution of generosity. However, bragging also signals a selfish motivation (a desire for credit) that undermines the attribution of generosity. Thus, bragging has a positive effect when prosocial behavior is unknown because it informs others that an actor has behaved generously. However, bragging does not help—and often hurts—when prosocial behavior is already known, because it signals a selfish motive. In addition, the authors demonstrate that conspicuous cause marketing products have effects akin to bragging by signaling an impure motive for doing good deeds. Finally, the authors argue that bragging about prosocial behavior is unique because it undermines the precise information that the braggart is trying to convey (generosity). In contrast, bragging about personal achievements does not affect perceptions of the focal trait conveyed in the brag. These findings underscore the strategic considerations inherent in signaling altruism.

Impediments to Effective Altruism: The Role of Subjective Preferences in Charitable Giving:

Charity could do the most good if every dollar donated went to causes that produced the greatest welfare gains. In line with this proposition, the effective-altruism movement seeks to provide individuals with information regarding the effectiveness of charities in hopes that they will contribute to organizations that maximize the social return of their donation. In this research, we investigated the extent to which presenting effectiveness information leads people to choose more effective charities. We found that even when effectiveness information is made easily comparable across options, it has a limited impact on choice. Specifically, people frequently choose less effective charity options when those options represent more subjectively preferred causes. In contrast to making a personal donation decision, outcome metrics are used to a much greater extent when choosing financial investments and when allocating aid resources as an agent of an organization. Implications for effective altruism are discussed.

The surprising costs of silence: Asymmetric preferences for prosocial lies of commission and omission

Across 7 experiments (N = 3883), we demonstrate that communicators and targets make egocentric moral judgments of deception. Specifically, communicators focus more on the costs of deception to them—for example, the guilt they feel when they break a moral rule—whereas targets focus more on whether deception helps or harms them. As a result, communicators and targets make asymmetric judgments of prosocial lies of commission and omission: Communicators often believe that omitting information is more ethical than telling a prosocial lie, whereas targets often believe the opposite. We document these effects within the context of health care discussions, employee layoffs, and economic games, among both clinical populations (i.e., oncologists and cancer patients) and lay people. We identify moderators and downstream consequences of this asymmetry. We conclude by discussing psychological and practical implications for medicine, management, behavioral ethics, and human communication.

Signaling Emotion and Reason in Cooperation

We explore the signal value of emotion and reason in human cooperation. Across four experiments utilizing dyadic prisoner dilemma games, we establish three central results. First, individuals believe that a reliance on emotion signals that one will cooperate more so than a reliance on reason. Second, these beliefs are generally accurate — those who act based on emotion are more likely to cooperate than those who act based on reason. Third, individuals’ behavioral responses towards signals of emotion and reason depends on their own decision mode: those who rely on emotion tend to conditionally cooperate (that is, cooperate only when they believe that their partner has cooperated), whereas those who rely on reason tend to defect regardless of their partner’s signal. These findings shed light on how different decision processes, and lay theories about decision processes, facilitate and impede cooperation.

You Can Handle the Truth: Mispredicting the Consequences of Honest Communication

People highly value the moral principle of honesty, and yet, they often avoid being honest with others. One reason people may avoid being completely honest is that honesty frequently conflicts with kindness: candidly sharing one’s opinions and feelings can hurt others and create social tension. In the present research, we explore the actual and predicted consequences of communicating honestly during difficult conversations. We compare honest communication to kind communication as well as a neutral control condition by randomly assigning individuals to be honest, kind, or conscious of their communication in every conversation with every person in their life for three days. We find that people significantly mispredict the consequences of communicating honestly: the experience of being honest is far more pleasurable, leads to greater levels of social connection, and does less relational harm than individuals expect. We establish these effects across two field experiments and two prediction experiments and we document the robustness of our results in a subsequent laboratory experiment. We explore the underlying mechanisms by qualitatively coding participants’ reflections during and following our experiments. This research contributes to our understanding of affective forecasting processes and uncovers fundamental insights on how communication and moral values shape well-being.

The Surprising Costs of Silence: Asymmetric Preferences for Prosocial Lies of Commission and Omission

Across seven experiments (N = 3883), we demonstrate that communicators and targets make egocentric moral judgments of deception. Specifically, communicators focus more on the costs of deception to them – e.g., the guilt they feel when they break a moral rule – whereas targets focus more on whether deception helps or harms them. As a result, communicators and targets make asymmetric judgments of prosocial lies of commission and omission: Communicators often believe that omitting information is more ethical than telling a prosocial lie, whereas targets often believe the opposite. We document these effects within the context of healthcare discussions, employee layoffs, and economic games, among both clinical populations (i.e., oncologists and cancer patients) and lay people. We identify moderators and downstream consequences of this asymmetry. We conclude by discussing psychological and practical implications for medicine, management, behavioral ethics, and human communication.

Who is Trustworthy? Predicting Trustworthy Intentions and Behavior

Existing trust research has disproportionately focused on what makes people more or less trusting, and has largely ignored the question of what makes people more or less trustworthy. In this investigation, we deepen our understanding of trustworthiness. Across six studies using economic games that measure trustworthy behavior and survey items that measure trustworthy intentions, we explore the personality traits that predict trustworthiness. We demonstrate that guilt-proneness predicts trustworthiness better than a variety of other personality measures, and we identify sense of interpersonal responsibility as the underlying mechanism by both measuring it and manipulating it directly. People who are high in guilt-proneness are more likely to be trustworthy than are individuals who are low in guilt-proneness, but they are not universally more generous. We demonstrate that people high in guilt-proneness are more likely to behave in interpersonally sensitive ways when they are more responsible for others’ outcomes. We also explore potential interventions to increase trustworthiness. Our findings fill a significant gap in the trust literature by building a foundation for investigating trustworthiness, by identifying a trait predictor of trustworthy intentions and behavior, and by providing practical advice for deciding in whom we should place our trust.