Requests and social distance in dictator games

This paper considers a dictator game where, prior to receiving an offer, recipients either do or do not make a request for an amount of the dictator's endowment. Further, participants either interact anonymously or face-to-face. Results indicate that the effect of requests depends on the mode of interaction with the act of making requests increasing offers with anonymous interaction and decreasing offers with face-to-face interaction. Apparently, whether the request increases or crowds out dictator giving is a function of how much the dictator would give in the absence of such communication.