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Life or Death Decisions: Framing the Call for Help
Eileen Chou & Keith Murnighan
PLoS ONE, March 2013
Background: Chronic blood shortages in the U.S. would be alleviated by small increases, in percentage terms, of people donating blood. The current research investigated the effects of subtle changes in charity-seeking messages on the likelihood of people responses to a call for help. We predicted that "avoid losses" messages would lead to more helping behavior than "promote gains" messages would.
Method: Two studies investigated the effects of message framing on helping intentions and behaviors. With the help and collaboration of the Red Cross, Study 1, a field experiment, directly assessed the effectiveness of a call for blood donations that was presented as either death-preventing (losses) or life-saving (gains), and as being of either more or less urgent need. With the help and collaboration of a local charity, Study 2, a lab experiment, assessed the effects of the gain-versus-loss framing of a donation-soliciting flyer on individuals' expectations of others' monetary donations as well their own volunteering behavior. Study 2 also assessed the effects of three emotional motivators - feelings of empathy, positive affect, and relational closeness.
Result: Study 1 indicated that, on a college campus, describing blood donations as a way to "prevent a death" rather than "save a life" boosted the donation rate. Study 2 showed that framing a charity's appeals as helping people to avoid a loss led to larger expected donations, increased intentions to volunteer, and more helping behavior, independent of other emotional motivators.
Conclusion: This research identifies and demonstrates a reliable and effective method for increasing important helping behaviors by providing charities with concrete ideas that can effectively increase helping behavior generally and potentially death-preventing behavior in particular.
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The multidimensional effects of a small gift: Evidence from a natural field experiment
Ellen Garbarino, Robert Slonim & Carmen Wang
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using a large natural field experiment, we demonstrate that a small unconditional gift (pen) more than doubled both small (survey) and large (blood donation) responses. We find no evidence that the opportunity for a small response crowded out the larger response; asking participants to also complete a survey directionally increased donations.
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Induced Altruism in Religious, Military, and Terrorist Organizations
Hector Qirko
Cross-Cultural Research, May 2013, Pages 131-161
Abstract:
Human altruism in non-kin, unreciprocated contexts is difficult to understand in evolutionary terms. However, neo-Darwinian theories remain a potentially useful means of illuminating this behavior. In particular, induced altruism, wherein cues of genetic relatedness are manipulated to elicit costly behaviors for the benefit of non-kin, appears highly relevant. This article reviews cross-cultural data on several examples of extremely costly altruism - vows of celibacy, suicide bombings, and combat suicide - as exhibited in organizational and institutional contexts. Two predictions are used to test the relevance of induced altruism to the reinforcement of altruistic commitment to these behaviors. First, different organizations requiring costly sacrifice by their members should employ similar practices involving patterns of association, phenotypic similarity, and kinship terminology that are associated with kin cue-manipulation. Second, these organizational practices should be adopted as a consequence of recruit pools growing increasingly larger and, thus, less genetically related. There appears to be support for both predictions, suggesting that cross-cultural analyses could provide an effective avenue through which to test this and other evolutionary theories related to human unreciprocated altruism in non-kin contexts.
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Jonathan Meer
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many charitable organizations believe it is worthwhile to solicit very small donations, particularly from young people, because these gifts form a habit of giving which leads to larger donations in the future. Indeed, there is some evidence of a positive correlation between giving when young and giving when old. However, such a correlation, by itself, does not constitute evidence of habit formation. Using data on alumni contributions to a university, we assess whether the correlation is due to habit formation - true state dependence - or to unobservable factors such as affinity to the school. We further examine whether habits form by the mere act of giving or based on the amount given. We implement an instrumental variables approach using the fact that performance of the school's athletic teams and solicitation by one's former roommates generate shocks to giving while young that are plausibly uncorrelated with giving when older. There is strong evidence of habit formation on the extensive margin, but not in the amount given. This finding has important implications for fundraising strategies, charities' accounting practices, and tax policy.
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Being Mimicked Increases Prosocial Behavior in 18-Month-Old Infants
Malinda Carpenter, Johanna Uebel & Michael Tomasello
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most previous research on imitation in infancy has focused on infants' learning of instrumental actions on objects. This study focused instead on the more social side of imitation, testing whether being mimicked increases prosocial behavior in infants, as it does in adults (van Baaren, Holland, Kawakami, & van Knippenberg, 2004). Eighteen-month-old infants (N = 48) were either mimicked or not by an experimenter; then either that experimenter or a different adult needed help. Infants who had previously been mimicked were significantly more likely to help both adults than infants who had not been mimicked. Thus, even in infancy, mimicry has positive social consequences: It promotes a general prosocial orientation toward others.
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Experimental Evidence of Self-Image Concerns as Motivation for Giving
Mirco Tonin & Michael Vlassopoulos
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, June 2013, Pages 19-27
Abstract:
In this paper we present evidence of self-image concerns in charitable giving using a laboratory experiment. Subjects make a series of three decisions of allocating an endowment of £ 10 between themselves and a passive recipient that is either a charity or the experimenters. When making these decisions subjects are informed that one of them will be chosen randomly at the end to determine payoffs. After all decisions have been made and it has been revealed which decision will determine payoffs we offer subjects an opportunity to opt out from their initial decision and receive £ 10 instead. We find that almost a quarter of subjects choose to opt out, while around one third opt out from a positive donation. The fact that a subject decides to revise a decision to give and chooses instead to keep the whole amount - an option that was available when she made the first decision and was not exercised - indicates that giving in the first instance was not motivated solely by altruism toward the recipient. We argue that opting out can be explained through a combination of a reduced benefit of self-signaling due to satiation, and an increase in the costs of giving at the opt out stage, as they are realized with certainty.
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Volunteering Predicts Health Among Those Who Value Others: Two National Studies
Michael Poulin
Health Psychology, forthcoming
Objective: The purpose of these studies was to examine the role of positive views of other people in predicting stress-buffering effects of volunteering on mortality and psychological distress.
Method: In Study 1, stressful life events, volunteering, and hostile cynicism assessed in a baseline Detroit-area survey (N = 846) predicted survival over a 5-year period, adjusting for relevant covariates. In Study 2, stressful life events, volunteering, and world benevolence beliefs assessed in a baseline national survey (N = 1,157) predicted psychological distress over a 1-year period, adjusting for distress at baseline.
Results: In Study 1, a Cox proportional hazard model indicated that for individuals low in cynicism, stress predicted mortality at low levels of volunteering but not at high levels of volunteering. This effect was not present among those high in cynicism. In Study 2, multiple regression analysis revealed that among individuals high in world benevolence beliefs, stress predicted elevated distress at low levels of volunteering but not at high levels of volunteering. This effect was absent for those lower in world benevolence beliefs.
Conclusions: Consistent with prior research on helping behavior, these studies indicate that helping behavior can buffer the effects of stress on health. However, the results of these studies indicate that stress-buffering effects of volunteering are limited to individuals with positive views of other people. Not all individuals may benefit from volunteering, and health-promotion efforts seeking to draw on health benefits of helping behavior may need to target their approach accordingly.
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The bystander effect in an N-person dictator game
Karthik Panchanathan, Willem Frankenhuis & Joan Silk
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, March 2013, Pages 285-297
Abstract:
Dozens of studies show that bystanders are less likely to help victims as bystander number increases. However, these studies model one particular situation, in which victims need only one helper. Using a multi-player dictator game, we study a different but common situation, in which a recipient's welfare increases with the amount of help, and donors can share the burden of helping. We find that dictators transfer less when there are more dictators, and recipients earn less when there are multiple dictators. This effect persisted despite mechanisms eliminating uncertainty about other dictators' behavior (a strategy method and communication). In a typical public goods game, people seem to transform the situation into an assurance game, willing to contribute if certain others will too. Despite similarities, people do not treat a recipient's welfare like a public good. Instead, people seem to transform the situation into a prisoner's dilemma, refusing to help whatever others do.
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Morten Brænder & Lotte Bøgh Andersen
Public Administration Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Exposure to the extreme stress of warfare may affect soldiers' perceptions of others and society. Using panel data from two companies on a tour of duty to Afghanistan in 2011, this article analyzes how different dimensions of soldiers' public service motivation are influenced by deployment to war. As expected, soldiers' compassion decreased and commitment to the public interest increased, while self-sacrifice did not change systematically. Deployment to war was expected to affect inexperienced soldiers more than their experienced colleagues, but this hypothesis was only partially satisfied. The key contribution of the article is the use of panel data and the examination of motivational changes. Moreover, studying soldiers' public service motivation enables us to connect public administration and military sociology and thereby to establish a better understanding of motivation in extreme settings.
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A comparison of Asians', Hispanics', and Whites' restaurant tipping
Michael Lynn
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, April 2013, Pages 834-839
Abstract:
Asians and Hispanics are perceived by many restaurant servers as poor tippers. This study tests the validity of those perceptions using data from a large restaurant chain's online customer satisfaction survey. Findings partially support servers' perceptions - Hispanics but not Asians tipped less on average than Whites after controlling for bill size, the customer's own ratings of service quality, and other variables. Discussion centers around the differences between these findings and those of a previous study and on the practical implications of the findings for restaurant managers.
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Tehila Kogut & Ehud Kogut
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People's preference to help victims about whom they have some information is known as the identifiable victim effect. Results of three studies, in which dispositional attachment styles were measured (study 1) and activated in a between-subjects priming manipulation (studies 2 and 3), suggest that the intensity of this phenomenon is related to the potential helper's adult attachment style. Specifically, we found that secure people provide similar levels of help to identified and unidentified victims. Attachment avoidance is associated with lower donations to both types of victims. Finally, the biggest gap between donations to identified and unidentified victims was found for anxious people, who tend to donate relatively higher amounts to identified victims and lower amounts to unidentified ones. Moreover, people under attachment-anxiety priming tend to perceive less similarity and connectedness between themselves and unidentified victims as opposed to identified victims, a tendency that may underlie the identifiability effect.
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Caring for sharing: How attachment styles modulate communal cues of physical warmth
Hans IJzerman et al.
Social Psychology, Spring 2013, Pages 160-166
Abstract:
Does physical warmth lead to caring and sharing? Research suggests that it does; physically warm versus cold conditions induce prosocial behaviors and cognitions. Importantly, previous research has not traced the developmental origins of the association between physical warmth and affection. The association between physical warmth and sharing may be captured in specific cognitive models of close social relations, often referred to as attachment styles. In line with this notion, and using a dictator game set-up, the current study demonstrates that children who relate to their friends with a secure attachment style are more generous toward their peers in warm than in cold conditions. This effect was absent for children who relate to friends with an insecure attachment style. Notably, however, these children not just always shared less: They allocated more stickers to a friend than to a stranger. These findings provide an important first step to understand how fundamental embodied relations develop early in life. We discuss broader implications for grounded cognition and person perception.
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Hannah Schreier, Kimberly Schonert-Reichl & Edith Chen
JAMA Pediatrics, April 2013, Pages 327-332
Importance: The idea that individuals who help others incur health benefits themselves suggests a novel approach to improving health while simultaneously promoting greater civic orientation in our society. The present study is the first experimental trial, to our knowledge, of whether regular volunteering can reduce cardiovascular risk factors in adolescents.
Objective: To test a novel intervention that assigned adolescents to volunteer with elementary school-aged children as a means of improving adolescents' cardiovascular risk profiles.
Design: Randomized controlled trial, with measurements taken at baseline and 4 months later (postintervention).
Setting: Urban public high school in western Canada.
Participants: One hundred six 10th-grade high school students who were fluent in English and free of chronic illnesses.
Intervention: Weekly volunteering with elementary school-aged children for 2 months vs wait-list control group.
Main Outcome Measures: Cardiovascular risk markers of C-reactive protein level, interleukin 6 level, total cholesterol level, and body mass index.
Results: No statistically significant group differences were found at baseline. Postintervention, adolescents in the intervention group showed significantly lower interleukin 6 levels (log10 mean difference, 0.13; 95% CI, 0.004 to 0.251), cholesterol levels (log10 mean difference, 0.03; 95% CI, 0.003 to 0.059), and body mass index (mean difference, 0.39; 95% CI, 0.07 to 0.71) compared with adolescents in the control group. Effects for C-reactive protein level were marginal (log10 mean difference, 0.13; 95% CI, -0.011 to 0.275). Preliminary analyses within the intervention group suggest that those who increased the most in empathy and altruistic behaviors, and who decreased the most in negative mood, also showed the greatest decreases in cardiovascular risk over time.
Conclusions and Relevance: Adolescents who volunteer to help others also benefit themselves, suggesting a novel way to improve health.
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Michael Babula
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, April 2013, Pages 899-908
Abstract:
The helping motivations of wealth-driven college students were investigated. Tang et al. argues that wealth-driven individuals are extrinsically motivated, and that extrinsic motivation negatively relates to helping behavior. The results of questionnaires and experimentation here contradict the recent literature. Seventy-two percent of subjects reported wealth as a top priority in life. Fifty-six percent of subjects would take an insider trading tip, and 78% of subjects offered help to a confederate who just learned his family member was in an accident and needed to make a telephone call. Logistic regression results showed intrinsic motivation among participants significantly predicted increased helping behavior. It is recommended that surveys used to create new paradigms be followed up with experimentation whenever feasible.
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Ease of retrieval and the moral circle
Simon Laham
Social Psychology, Winter 2013, Pages 33-36
Abstract:
Two studies demonstrate that the ease with which moral circle exemplars come to mind influences the size of the moral circle and moral behavior. Participants who generated three exemplars had significantly larger circles than those asked to generate 15. Further, those who generated three exemplars were more likely to take a newsletter providing information on how to help circle members. These studies demonstrate the impact of metacognitive experiences on moral judgment and behavior, and highlight the importance of including metacognitive variables in any comprehensive account of moral judgment.