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Donating to charity not only about sympathy

Arvid Erlandsson
Arvid Erlandsson

In the run-up to Christmas, a lot of us consider donating to charities. But what motivates us to actually follow through? Too much focus on encouraging sympathy in potential charity donors can actually have the opposite effect, according to new research from Lund University in Sweden.

Our willingness to help others is controlled as much by our head and moral compass - as by the heart. This has been shown by psychology researcher Arvid Erlandsson in a new thesis from Lund University. His research covers two issues that are of crucial importance to charities: in what situations do we give more or less money, and what motivates us to help.

Erlandsson has focused on three different psychological mechanisms that affect our attitude to charity. The generally accepted and most well-known reason for helping is that we feel sympathy for the person in need (we follow our hearts). The second mechanism that gets us to open our wallets is that we feel that we are making a difference, that our contribution really helps (we follow our heads). The third mechanism is that we sometimes feel a great personal responsibility and sense an obligation to help (we follow our ‘moral compass’).

In a series of studies, Erlandsson has investigated in what situations our giving can best be explained by our heart, head and moral compass.

“It is not sufficient to get potential donors to feel sorry for those in need – they must also feel that their contribution can make a difference and feel that they have at least a certain degree of personal responsibility to help”, said Erlandsson. “For instance, if the problem appears insurmountable or we think that responsibility to act lies with others, there is a major risk that we will choose not to do anything – despite intense sympathy for those in need.”

In one of his studies, the participants were faced with a fictional situation in which they could help a large proportion of a small group, or the same number of people but as a small proportion of a large group (56 out of 60 people or 56 out of 560). It was clear that participants were more willing to help in the first scenario, despite the fact that the same number of people would receive help. The reason for this was that the perceived benefit was higher when a large proportion of those in need could be helped.

Another study was designed from more of a marketing perspective, in which participants got to distribute real money between two different aid projects. One project showed identified individuals (with name and photograph). The other described the situation only using statistics.

“Even if projects that feature identified persons in need almost always prompt a greater emotional response, this doesn’t always mean that we give more money to those projects. When participants could compare the two projects against each other, they were in fact more likely to prefer the project presented in statistics”, said Erlandsson.

Erlandsson was also able to demonstrate that we prefer to help people local to us rather than people in distant countries. What was interesting was that it is not that we feel more sympathy for people in need from our own group, but that we feel a greater responsibility to help people from our own country than people from another country with an equivalent standard of living.

Despite his thesis demonstrating that aspects other than emotions can increase our charitable giving, Erlandsson stressed that emotions still play an important role. Feelings of sympathy are probably necessary to get us to willingly open our wallets for others, but too great a focus on encouraging sympathy in potential donors may mean missing other aspects that are important for charitable giving.

Thesis:
Arvid Erlandsson will defend his PhD thesis Underlying psychological mechanisms of helping effects: Examining the when × why of charitable giving at Lund University on January 16th.

Contact:
Arvid Erlandsson
 +46 722 000452
arvid [dot] erlandsson [at] psy [dot] lu [dot] se (arvid[dot]erlandsson[at]psy[dot]lu[dot]se)

 

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