Beware of Popular Kids Bearing Gifts

Jingnan Chen (University of Exeter)Daniel Houser (ICES & George Mason University)

Natalia Montinari (University of Lund)Marco Piovesan (University of Copenhagen)

SEA Workshop Celebrating Lise and John21 November, 2014

Thank you Lise and John!

For your dedication to excellence!

For your support for our profession!For inspiration!

Purpose

Investigate the relationship between popularity and pro-sociality in both Public and Private.

Strong correlation between popularity and generosity. Popular people are perceived to be pro-social

George Lucas donated $4,250,000 since 2010.

Taylor Swift’s generosity lands her state honor.

Motivation

Motivation

Non-human primate study of hierarchies suggests that higher-ranking chimpanzees are more pro-social than lower-ranking. (Horner et al. PNAS 2001)

Key Question

Popular people are innately more generous

or

better public image management?

Applications

• Charitable giving

• Politician’s decision making

• Behavioral change from “double-blind” to “single-blind”

• …

What is popularity?Degree of likability and level of support from the peers. (Wikipedia)

For our purpose, a person is more popular if more of her peers desire to be in her company.

Popularity gives rise to status. And status can confer popularity. Some sociologists use popularity and status interchangeably (Cillensen & Lausu, 2011).

Related LiteratureBeing popular (high status) has great economic consequences

•Seize a greater share in the surplus in market (Ball & Eckel, 2001)

•Enjoy wager premium later in life (Conti et al. 2013)

•Celebrity endorsement deals.

Related LiteratureBeing popular (high status) has great positive developmental consequences on children

•Being unpopular is associated with adverse behavior, poor academic performances and poor psychological health (Kosloski & Bell, 2003).

Related Literature• Being popular is also correlated with greater pro-

sociality (Cillessen & Mayeux, 2004; LaFontana & Cillessen, 1999, 2002).

• Pro-social behaviors are foundation of prosperous society, and are more common in public environments. (e.g. Fehr 2011)

No research looking at the varying effect of popularity on pro-sociality between public and private environments.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design• 231 children ranging from grade 1 to 5 across

5 schools in the district of Treviso in Italy.

• Dictator game with an anonymous kid in another class or school.

decide out of 4 silly bands, how many to share.

Experimental Design

Public Private

JingnanDanNataliaMarco…

1302

JingnanDanNataliaMarco…

XXXX

Elicitation of Popularity

Experimental Design

Nice Property of Our Elicitation Method

Better serves our purpose of eliciting popularity than “who’s your best friend survey”

Easier for the children to grasp, ecologically valid. Something that kids do all the time during their lunch time - choose who to sit with.

Seating charts translate easily into popularity using Borda counts.

Creating Popularity Index using Borda Count

Borda Count (BC)

• Rank , and assign , so on and forth.

• Popularity index reflects within-class popularity in descending order (the smaller the index, the more popular is the kid in his/her class).

Construct Popularity Index (PI)

Results

Result 1

Main popularity effect: positive popularity effect on sharing, however only in Public, not in Private.

Main Popularity Effect

Result 2

Main age effect: positive age effect on sharing, both in Public and in Private.

Main Age Effect

Result 3

Interaction effect of popularity and age: positive interaction effect on sharing, only in Public, not in Private.

Popularity and Age Effect

Conclusion• Public environments promote pro-sociality only among

popular children

• In private, popular and less popular children display the same behavior

• Popular children do not seem to be innately more generous.

• Older children display greater pro-sociality in both Public and Private treatments.

• Positive interaction effect of popularity and age on pro-sociality is present in Public but not Private.

Thank you!

Regression Support

Hypotheses

Hypotheses IPublic environments promote pro-social behavior among popular people to a greater extent than less popular people, while behavior in private decision contexts does not vary with popularity.

Hypotheses I

• Social signaling (Andreoni & Berheim 2009, Charness et al. 2003)

• Moral wiggle room (Dana et al. 2007)

• Impression management (Barclay & Miller, 2007)

Hypotheses II

• Positive age effect on pro-sociality

• Older children display greater generosity, and this effect is invariant to Public or Private settings.

Hypotheses II

• Development of egalitarian preferences (Fehr et al. 2008).

• Development of theory of mind, anticipated disapproval from peers (Houser et al. 2012)

Hypotheses III

• Popularity and age interaction effect

• Older, more popular children exhibit greater level of sharing only exhibit in Public, not in Private

Data Summary

Main Popularity Effect