When people share their prosocial behavior on social media, they face a dilemma. By making prosocial disclosures, they risk being perceived as self-promoting or even selfish and thus less likable. By staying silent, they fail to spread awareness about prosocial activities they value. Drawing on attribution theory, we study the digital reaction of likes to the self-disclosure of prosocial activities that involve multiple stakeholders to understand the affordances and constraints of social media. Leveraging field data on a social networking site, we found that reporting a higher level of self-effort increases the digital reaction of likes. To our surprise, expressing gratitude for the sponsor’s efforts also increased likes for such self-disclosures. Through lab experiments that emulated this context, we dissected this paradox by separating the positive effect of expressing gratitude and the negative effect of sharing credit with other stakeholders on likes. Further, we underscore the salience of expressing gratitude, even when gratitude was extended to sponsors with bad reputations. Our study contributes to the design of a more humane digital world where individuals share and promote prosocial activities without compromising their likability and offers valuable insights for navigating the evolving landscape of social networking platforms.

中文翻译：

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畅游亲社会披露和喜爱度的数字领域


当人们在社交媒体上分享他们的亲社会行为时，他们面临着两难境地。通过进行亲社会的披露，他们可能会被视为自我推销甚至自私，从而不太讨人喜欢。通过保持沉默，他们无法传播人们对他们所重视的亲社会活动的认识。借鉴归因理论，我们研究了点赞对亲社会活动自我披露的数字反应，这些活动涉及多个利益相关者，以了解社交媒体的可供性和限制。利用社交网站上的现场数据，我们发现报告更高水平的自我努力会增加点赞的数字反应。令我们惊讶的是，对赞助商的努力表示感谢也增加了对此类自我披露的喜欢。通过模拟这种背景的实验室实验，我们通过区分表达感激之情的积极影响和与其他利益相关者分享赞誉的消极影响来剖析这个悖论。此外，我们强调表达感激之情的重要性，即使感激之情是针对声誉不佳的赞助商的。我们的研究有助于设计一个更加人性化的数字世界，在这个世界中，个人可以在不损害自己喜好的情况下分享和促进亲社会活动，并为驾驭不断发展的社交网络平台格局提供宝贵的见解。