Measuring Image Concerns

54 Pages Posted: 21 Sep 2015

See all articles by Emeric Henry

Emeric Henry

Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po)

Jan Sonntag

Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po)

Date Written: September 2015

Abstract

It is now well documented that individuals, on average, change their behavior when their actions are observed by others. Yet, there is no systematic way of measuring this dimension of preferences at the individual level. In this paper, we propose a novel experimental game to measure the individual sensitivity to image concerns. We test it experimentally and provide several justifications for the validity of our measure. We find a large heterogeneity in the population: one third of the sample appears totally insensitive to perceptions by others, while one third appears strongly imaged concerned. Members of ethnic minorities seem to be more imaged concerned, in particular when observed by a member of other groups. We also show that more image concerned individuals tend to be less cooperative. Finally, we provide preliminary evidence suggesting that individuals do not only care about the absolute image they convey, but also about how far this image is from reality.

Keywords: image concern, social norm

JEL Classification: D03, D64

Suggested Citation

Henry, Emeric and Sonntag, Jan, Measuring Image Concerns (September 2015). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP10831, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2663429

Emeric Henry (Contact Author)

Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) ( email )

27 rue Saint-Guillaume
Paris Cedex 07, 75337
France

Jan Sonntag

Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) ( email )

27 rue Saint-Guillaume
Paris Cedex 07, 75337
France

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
1
Abstract Views
747
PlumX Metrics