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Nice to you, nicer to me: Does self-serving generosity diminish the reciprocal response?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Daniel Woods  and
Maroš Servátka Open the ORCID record for Maroš Servátka [Opens in a new window]
Daniel Woods*
Affiliation:
Purdue University, Krannert School of Management, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Maroš Servátka*
Affiliation:
Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Sydney, Australia University of Economics, Bratislava, Slovakia
*
woods104@purdue.edu
maros.servatka@mgsm.edu.au
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Abstract

Reciprocity has been shown to be sensitive to perceived intentions, however, not much is known about the intensity of reciprocal responses to the precise nature of those intentions. For example, a person can strategically appear to be kind while being self-serving or can be selflessly (genuinely) kind. Do these two intentions elicit different reciprocal reactions? We propose a conjecture that self-serving but generous actions diminish the positively reciprocal response, compared to selfless generous actions. We classify actions that increase a recipient’s maximum payoff, but by less than the giver’s maximum payoff, as being self-serving generous actions, while classifying actions that increase a recipient’s maximum payoff by more than the giver’s as selfless generous actions. We hypothesize that selfless generous actions are considered more generous than self-serving generous actions, and that self-serving generous actions will therefore result in a diminished reciprocal response. We test this conjecture using two novel experimental designs. We find some evidence that subjects perceive self-serving generous actions as being less generous than selfless generous actions, but no empirical support for our conjecture on the diminished reciprocal response.

Keywords

ReciprocityGenerositySelf-ServingGenuineExperimentLost wallet gameInvestment game

JEL classification

C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior C70: General
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , 15 June 2019 , pp. 506 - 529
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-018-9561-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

If you’re helping someone and expecting something in return, you’re doing business not kindness.

Unknown.

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