When it pays to be kind: The allocation of indirect reciprocity within power hierarchies

• Published in: Organizational behavior and human decision processes Vol. 165; pp. 115 - 126
• Main Authors: Inesi, M. Ena, Adams, Gabrielle S., Gupta, Anurag
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.07.2021
• Subjects: Indirect reciprocity; Moral character; Perceived motive; Power; Prosocial behavior; Perceived motive; Moral character; Prosocial behavior; Indirect reciprocity; Power
• ISSN: 0749-5978; 1095-9920
• DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2021.04.005

•How do observers decide which prosocial actors to reward with indirect reciprocity?•Three pre-registered experiments show that power affects indirect reciprocity allocations.•Prosocial acts targeted at higher-power individuals earn less indirect reciprocity.•Indirect reciprocity measures include sharing of bonus money and help offered.•Perceived motive and moral character assessments drive this pattern. Indirect reciprocity – the notion that third-party observers offer rewards to prosocial actors – is known to increase levels of cooperative behavior. Yet we know relatively little about how people decide to grant indirect reciprocity. This process is complex because it relies on assessing moral character, which is unobservable. In the current research, we identify a salient cue in the social environment that observers use to calibrate their indirect reciprocity: power differences. Across three experiments, observers were less likely to offer indirect reciprocity to employees who targeted their generosity toward higher- rather than lower-power co-workers. Indirect reciprocity was measured through the allocation of participants’ own financial resources (Experiments 1 and 2), as well as behavioral intentions (Experiment 3). Experiment 3 also showed that this effect is driven by observers’ perceptions of actors’ motives, which inform assessments of moral character.