Social status and prosocial behavior

This paper studies the effects of social status—a socially recognized ranking of individuals—on prosocial behavior. We use a laboratory experiment and propose a theory to address this issue. In a one-shot game, two players, whose social status is either earned or randomly assigned, jointly make effort contributions to a project. Player 1 first suggests an effort level for each player to player 2 who then determines the actual effort levels. Deviation from the proposal is costly. We find causal evidence that high-status players are less selfish than their low-status counterparts. In particular, high-status players 2 provide relatively more effort, ceteris paribus, than those with low status. The experimental results and theoretical framework suggest that a high social ranking yields more social behavior and that this can be attributed to the sense of responsibility that it gives.