Thanks for a good time
A Preliminary Examination of Cell Phone Use and Helping Behavior
Curtis Puryear & Stephen Reysen
Psychological Reports, December 2013, Pages 1001-1003
Abstract:
Use of a cell phone reduces attention and increases response times. 62 people (30 men, 32 women) were confronted with a confederate wearing a large leg brace, who dropped a stack of magazines and feigned difficulty retrieving them. Among the 33 people who talked on their cell phones only 9% offered their help, whereas among the 29 people who did not talk on their cell phones, 72% offered help. The use of cell phones affects helping behavior.
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Geographical Differences in Subjective Well-Being Predict Extraordinary Altruism
Kristin Brethel-Haurwitz & Abigail Marsh
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Altruistic kidney donation is a form of extraordinary altruism, the antecedents of which are poorly understood. Although well-being is known to increase the incidence of prosocial behaviors and there is significant geographical variation in both well-being and altruistic kidney donation in the United States, it is unknown whether geographical variation in well-being predicts the prevalence of this form of extraordinary altruism. We calculated per capita rates of altruistic kidney donation across the United States and found that an index of subjective well-being predicted altruistic donation, even after we controlled for relevant sociodemographic variables. This relationship persisted at the state level and at the larger geographic regional level. Consistent with hypotheses about the relationship between objective and subjective well-being, results showed that subjective well-being mediated the relationship between increases in objective well-being metrics, such as income, and altruism. These results suggest that extraordinary altruism may be promoted by societal factors that increase subjective well-being.
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Convincing Yourself to Care About Others: An Intervention for Enhancing Benevolence Values
Sharon Arieli, Adam Grant & Lilach Sagiv
Journal of Personality, February 2014, Pages 15–24
Abstract:
To study value change, this research presents an intervention with multiple exercises designed to instigate change through both effortful and automatic routes. Aiming to increase the importance attributed to benevolence values, which reflect the motivation to help and care for others, the intervention combines three mechanisms for value change (self-persuasion, consistency-maintenance, and priming). In three experiments, 142 undergraduates (67% male, ages 19–26) participated in an intervention emphasizing the importance of either helping others (benevolence condition) or recognizing flexibility in personality (control condition). We measured the importance of benevolence values before and after the task. In Experiment 1, the intervention increased U.S. participants' benevolence values. In Experiment 2, we replicated these effects in a different culture (Israel) and also showed that by enhancing benevolence values, the intervention increased participants' willingness to volunteer to help others. Experiment 3 showed that the increases in the importance of benevolence values lasted at least 4 weeks. Our results provide evidence that value change does not require fictitious feedback or information about social norms, but can occur through a 30-min intervention that evokes both effortful and automatic processes.
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Rebecca Schaumberg & Scott Wiltermuth
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, March 2014, Pages 110–123
Abstract:
Across three experiments, people escalated commitment more frequently to a failing prosocial initiative (i.e., an initiative that had the primary aim of improving the outcomes of others in need) than they did to a failing egoistic initiative (i.e., an initiative that had the primary aim of improving the outcomes of the decision-maker). A test of mediation (Study 1b) and a test of moderation (Study 2) each provided evidence that a desire for a positive moral self-regard underlies people’s tendency to escalate commitment more frequently to failing prosocial initiatives than to failing egoistic initiatives. We discuss the implications of these findings for the resource-allocation decisions that people and organizations face when undertaking initiatives with prosocial aims.
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Fundraising through online social networks: A field experiment on peer-to-peer solicitation
Marco Castillo, Ragan Petrie & Clarence Wardell
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two main reasons why people donate to charity are that they have been asked and asked by someone they care about. One would therefore expect that charitable organizations could benefit from peer-to-peer fundraising if they were able to persuade donors to do so for them. However, little is known on the costs and benefits of asking donors to fundraise. We investigate this by implementing a field experiment embedded in an online giving organization’s web page. In our experiment, donors who have completed an online transaction were randomly asked to share having donated by posting on their Facebook (FB) wall or by sending a private message to a friend on FB. To further explore the impact of incentives on the willingness to fundraise, donors were also assigned to one of three treatments in which the organization added either $0, $1 or $5 in the donor's name in exchange for sharing the information. We have several findings: (1) Donors respond to incentives: larger add-on donations increase the willingness to post having made a donation. (2) Nuisance costs may be important: willingness to post is over two times higher among those already logged into FB. (3) The type of ask matters: willingness to post via one’s wall or via a private message is different. (4) There are benefits to incentivizing peer-to-peer fundraising in increased new donations.
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Hitchhiking and the ‘Sunshine Driver’: Further Effects of Weather Conditions on Helping Behavior
Nicolas Guéguen & Jordy Stefan
Psychological Reports, December 2013, Pages 994-1000
Abstract:
Previous studies have shown that pleasant weather conditions can improve people's mood and facilitate positive social relationships. The current study tested the effect of sunshine on drivers' willingness to give hitchhikers a ride. Four confederates (2 men, 2 women; M age = 20 yr.) acted as hitchhikers on the roadside in France, on sunny and cloudy days. To minimize the influence of other important variables, hitchhiking was conducted only when it was not raining and only when the external temperatures were between 20° and 24 °C. Motorists' behavior in 2,864 hitchhiking events was analyzed. The results showed that both male and female drivers stopped more on sunny days than on cloudy days for both male and female hitchhikers. Perhaps the positive mood induced by the sunshine promotes helping behaviors.
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Help-Seeking Helps: Help-Seeking and Group Image
Juliet Wakefield, Nick Hopkins & Ronni Michelle Greenwood
Small Group Research, February 2014, Pages 89-113
Abstract:
Seeking help from an outgroup can be difficult, especially when the outgroup is known to stereotype the ingroup negatively and the potential recipient cares strongly about its social image. However, we ask whether even highly identified ingroup members may seek help from a judgmental outgroup if doing so allows them to disconfirm the outgroup’s negative stereotype of the ingroup. We presented participants with one of two negative outgroup stereotypes of their ingroup. One could be disconfirmed through seeking help, the other could not. Study 1 (n = 43) showed group members were aware of the strategic implications of seeking help for disconfirming these stereotypes. Study 2 (n = 43) showed high identifiers acted on such strategic knowledge by seeking more help from the outgroup when help-seeking could disconfirm a negative stereotype of their group (than when it could not). Implications for the seeking and acceptance of help are discussed.
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Web disclosure and the market for charitable contributions
Gregory Saxton, Daniel Neely & Chao Guo
Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Nonprofit organizations face intense competition in the market for charitable contributions. Increasingly, donation decisions are made online, and organizations have responded by implementing substantive Internet disclosure and reporting regimes. We posit here that the voluntary disclosure of financial and performance information inherent in these regimes provides additional relevant information to a broad array of market participants, and thus has a positive impact on the receipt of charitable contributions. We test our hypotheses on a random sample of 400 US nonprofit organizations by building on the well established economic model of giving (Weisbrod and Dominguez, 1986), in which donations serve as the proxy for demand. Our central research question is thus: Are donors willing to “pay” for Web disclosure? Results indicate a positive relationship between the level of charitable contributions and the amount of disclosure provided by an organization on its website; however, performance and annual report disclosure are more important than financial disclosure, and performance disclosure has the biggest impact in organizations that are less reliant on donations.
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Intrinsic Motivation, Effort and the Call to Public Service
Sheheryar Banuri & Philip Keefer
World Bank Working Paper, December 2013
Abstract:
Pay schemes in the public sector aim to attract motivated, high-ability applicants. A nascent literature has found positive effects of higher pay on ability and no or slightly positive effects on motivation. This paper revisits this issue with a novel subject pool, students destined for the private and public sectors in Indonesia. The analysis uses dictator games and real effort tasks to examine wage effects on a measure of motivation that exactly matches the mission of the public sector task. The model and experimental design allow for precisely measuring (1) the distribution of ability over the effort task; (2) the distribution of motivational preferences for public sector missions; and (3) outside options when choosing to work for public sector missions. Three novel conclusions emerge. First, more pro-social workers do, in fact, exert higher effort in a pro-social task. Second, in contrast to previous research, motivated individuals are more likely to join the public sector when public sector pay is low than when it is high. Third, real public sector workers exhibit greater pro-sociality than private sector workers, even for entrants into the Indonesian Ministry of Finance.