Abstract

In this paper, we report the results of two experiments that attempt to elicit social image effects. The first experiment ( $$N = 1,252$$ ) provides little evidence that individuals behave in more ‘prosocial’ ways when their choices are disclosed to other participants. If anything, imposing observability appears to make the participants slightly less prosocial, although this effect is not statistically significant. The second experiment ( $$N = 750$$ ) generates similar results and further suggests that our results are not dependent on the omission (or inclusion) of ranking information. We discuss why our experiments fail to generate the results that we had expected and why our results differ from those in the published literature.