Giving from a distance: Putting the charitable organization at the center of the donation appeal
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Prosocial Behavior
Empathy facilitates everyday social interactions and has often been linked in the literature to prosocial behavior. Robust evidence has been found for a positive relationship between experiencing empathy and behaving prosocially. However, empathy, and the empathy–prosocial behavior relationship in particular, has been studied mostly in combination with negative emotions. Less research has been conducted on empathy for positive emotions, and the link between positive empathy and displayed prosocial behavior has not been intensively investigated so far. The purpose of the present article is thus twofold: first, we review and summarize research evidence on empathy for positive emotions, and second, we propose that people’s motivation to maintain an experienced positive affect is a viable mechanism linking positive empathy and prosocial behavior.
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Subjects donate individually (control group) or in pairs (treatment group). Those in pairs reveal their donation decision to each other. Average donations in the treatment group are significantly higher than in the control group. Paired subjects have the opportunity to revise their donation decision after discussion. Pair members shift toward each others' initial decisions. Subjects are happier with their decision when their donations are larger, but those in pairs are less happy, controlling for amount donated. These findings suggest reluctant altruism due to peer pressure in charitable giving.
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Signaling, as well as receiving social information on charitable giving, is known to stimulate individuals’ donation. In this respect, we conduct a framed field experiment to analyze the interplay between signaling or receiving social information and donors’ inherent level of altruism. Intuitively, respondents with a high level of altruism donate significantly more than those with a lower level. In addition, we find that having the chance to set a positive example as well as being exposed to such enhances charitable giving, whereas the opportunity of image signaling alone does not. Furthermore, setting a positive example yields the highest donation rate among respondents with a high level of altruism, while being exposed to such yields the highest donation rate among respondents with a low level of altruism. The effect on overall donations by confronting participants with a social descriptive norm (i.e., previous donations) is significantly stronger for those with a low level of altruism, leading to an alignment of the donations by both types of donors. These heterogeneous results suggest that adapting appeals to potential donors’ inherent levels of altruism has the potential to significantly increase the efficiency of charitable campaigns.
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The word “prosocial” does not appear in most dictionaries; it
was created by social scientists as an antonym for “antisocial.” Prosocial behavior covers the broad range of actions intended
to benefi t one or more people other than oneself-behaviors
such as helping, comforting, sharing, cooperation, philanthropy,
and community service. The word “altruism” has at times also
been used to refer to these behaviors, or to a subset of them such
as self-sacrifi cial helping or helping in the absence of external
rewards. This usage seems inappropriate, however, because
altruism is a motivational concept. Altruism is motivation to
increase another person’s welfare; it is contrasted to egoism ,
motivation to increase one’s own welfare (Comte, 1851/1875,
Dixon, 2008; MacIntyre, 1967). There is no one-to-one correspondence between prosocial behavior and altruism. Prosocial
behavior need not be motivated by altruism; altruistic motivation need not produce prosocial behavior.
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The study is motivated by a growing body of literature showing that donations in developing countries are stagnating, which leads to plausible suggestions of a decline in altruism and philanthropy. The study suggests that the probable explanation may lie in the attitude of individuals towards donations, and tries to explain this phenomenon basing on the nature of the donor, either being altruistic or hedonistic. The paper proposes a conceptual model that aims at predicting donation behaviour of individuals. The proposed model integrates ideas from previous studies within the field of altruism and donor behaviour. The results revealed that an individual’s attitude towards donations correlates with how much they are likely to donate, and that altruists are likely to donate amounts higher than those donated by hedonists despite the negative attitude that altruists are likely to have towards donations.
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This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Data Levels of Empathy and Altruism Trends in Empathy and Altruism Intercorrelations of Empathy, Altruistic Values, and Altruistic Behaviors Correlates of Empathy and Altruism Multivariate Models of Empathy and Altruism Conclusion References
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Parents' and children's empathy and prosocial behavior SHIGEO SAKURAI (Nara University of Education) The purpose of this study was to investigate the relations among parents' and the children' s empathy and prosocial behavior. Two hundred and twenty-five fifth-graders were asked to assess their and their parents' empathy and prosocial behavior using a new questionnaire. The fathers' empathy scores were highly related to their prosocial behavior scores. This relation applied to mothers' and the children's scores. The scores of parents' empathy and prosocial behavior also moderately related to those of the children's empathy and prosocial behavior. Raters' sex differences were found in relations of 1) mothers' empathy and prosocial behavior, 2) children's empathy and prosocial behavior, 3) mothers' empathy and the children's empathy, and 4) mothers' empathy and the children's prosocial behavior. These relations were higher in boys' rating than in girls' rating. The results suggest that the cognition of relations among parents' and the children's empathy and prosocial behavior may be more complicated in girls than in boys.
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Abstract Subjects donate individually (control group) or in pairs (treatment group). Those in pairs reveal their donation decision to each other. Average donations in the treatment group are significantly higher than in the control group. Paired subjects have the opportunity to revise their donation decision after discussion. Pair members shift toward each others’ initial decisions. Subjects are happier with their decision when their donations are larger, but those in pairs are less happy, controlling for amount donated. These findings suggest reluctant altruism due to peer pressure in charitable giving.
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BACKGROUND: Blood donation can be described as a prosocial behavior, and donors often cite prosocial reasons such as altruism, empathy, or social responsibility for their willingness to donate. Previous studies have not quantitatively evaluated these characteristics in donors or examined how they relate to donation frequency. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: As part of a donor motivation study, 12,064 current and lapsed donors answered questions used to create an altruistic behavior, empathetic concern, and social responsibility motivation score for each donor. Analysis of variance was used to compare mean scores by demographics and donor status and to determine the influence of each variable on the mean number of donations in the past 5 years. RESULTS: The mean score for each prosocial characteristic appeared high, with lower scores in male and younger donors. Higher altruistic behavior and social responsibility motivation scores were associated with increased past donation frequency, but the effects were minor. Empathetic concern was not associated with prior donation. The largest differences in prior donations were by age and donor status, with older and current donors having given more frequently. CONCLUSION: Most blood donors appear to have high levels of the primary prosocial characteristics (altruism, empathy, and social responsibility) commonly thought to be the main motivators for donation, but these factors do not appear to be the ones most strongly related to donation frequency. Traditional donor appeals based on these characteristics may need to be supplemented by approaches that address practical concerns like convenience, community safety, or personal benefit.
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