Promises and expectations

Abstract

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) leads to a signi…cant change in promisor behavior. We provide evidence that a promisor's aversion to disappointing a promisee's expectation leads her to behave more generously. We propose and estimate a simple model of conditional guilt aversion that is supported by our results and nests the …ndings of previous contributions as special cases.

Morality, Compensation, and the Contractual Obligation

“…Recent studies that investigate why individuals keep promises advance guilt aversion (Charness & Dufwenberg 2006Ederer & Stremitzer 2017) and moral commitment (Ellingsen & Johanesson 2004;Vanberg 2008) as two possible reasons. While the first one holds that, in brief, individuals tend to keep promises in order to avoid guilt from letting down the expectations of the promisee, the second one advances individual preferences for keeping promises, and for respecting shared and accepted moral norms.…”

Committing the English and the Continental Way: An Experiment

“…The debate centers around the question why individu-als keep their promises in the first place. Two explanations compete: Either individuals have a preference for keeping the promise per se (Vanberg 2008) and feel committed Dufwenberg 2010, Ellingsen, Johannesson et al 2010), or their behavior is driven by expectations and guilt aversion (Charness and Dufwenberg 2006, Battigalli and Dufwenberg 2007, Ederer and Stremitzer 2016. It has been argued that it depends on social closeness which of these two explanations is critical (Morell 2015).…”

Communication, Expectations, and Trust: An Experiment with Three Media

“…As promises in dyadic communications are known to enhance trustworthy behavior [24], we also considered the role of sender and receiver promises and group agreements on coordinating beliefs and actions in the trust game. Unlike many studies on promises that focus on two-person communications, we explored the effect of promises and agreements under free-form multi-way group 6 Ederer and Stremitzer [28] finds that game irrelevant "empty talk" communication does better than sending no message. 7 Greiner et al [30] also find that communication had little effect on Second Life residents in an ultimatum game experiment, suggesting environmental or selection effects among Second Life residents.…”

“…Vanberg [37] questions these conclusions and suggests that people have a preference for keeping their promises per se. See also Charness and Dufwenberg [38], Ederer and Stremitzer [28] and Di Bartolomeo et al [39].…”