How Dictators Use Information about Recipients

Abstract This paper explores the extent to which altruism is influenced by the salient features of the beneficiaries. We investigate how information presented to senders affects their perception of the recipient in a dictator game. In this environment, the starting endowment of a recipient can be inferred from choices the recipient made. Dictators give the same amount to all recipients regardless of the choices they made, despite the revealed preference to send more money to recipients who started with lower endowments. Dictators give very little when they are explicitly told that a recipient started with a high endowment. However, when dictators are only told that the recipient made a choice that indicates they started with a high endowment, dictators do not incorporate that information. Dictators are not more generous to others who made a similar financial choice to themselves, through in-group bias. An implication from our results is that charitable donors are influenced by salient information about recipients and do not try to infer deservingness beyond what is explicitly presented.