Promises, Expectations, and Social Cooperation

Promises, Expectations, and Social Cooperation∗

Promising serves as an important commitment mechanism by operating on a potential cheater’s internal value system. We present experimental evidence on what motivates people to keep their promises. First, they feel that they are duty-bound to keep their promises regardless of whether promisees expect them to (promising per se effect). Second, they care about not disappointing promisees’expectati...

Promises, Expectations, and Rights

Promises are unique and perplexing in that, by promising, we can voluntarily transform the moral status of an action. A promise can change an optional act into an obligatory one.1 By promising, it seems that we can create moral rights and obligations “from nothing.” Specifically, we can create the promisee’s right to have the action performed and the promisor’s self-imposed obligation to perfor...

Promises and expectations

We investigate why people keep their promises in the absence of external enforcement mechanisms and reputational e¤ects. In a controlled laboratory experiment we show that exogenous variation of second-order expectations (promisors’expectations about promisees’ expectations that the promise will be kept) leads to a signi…cant change in promisor behavior. We provide clean evidence that a promiso...

Binding Promises and Cooperation Among Strangers

Leadership and Social Expectations∗

We provide experimental evidence that individuals lead by example to encourage pro-social actions to meet social expectations. Giving extra in order to encourage others to give may be due to altruism, reputational considerations or to do what individuals think is expected of them. However, the third motivation has received little attention and often is a confound of the other motivations. Our e...