Face-saving or fair-minded : what motivates moral behavior?

Abstract

We study the relative importance of intrinsic moral motivation and extrinsic social motivation in explaining behavior in the dictator game. We introduce a novel design that manipulates these two dimensions. The paper offers four main findings. First, intrinsic moral motivation is of fundamental importance. Second, extrinsic social motivation matters and is crowding-in with intrinsic moral motivation. Third, extrinsic social motivation generates behavior consistent with some participants being motivated by guilt and shame and others by social esteem and pride. Fourth, sharing behavior in the dictator game is strongly associated with charitable giving outside the lab and with political preferences.