Prosocial behavior: a dual process account of how others' actions influence donation decisions
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Charity giving decisions are complex and often biased by people’s cognitive and affective processes; they have to consider a large amount of information about the recipient, his/her situation, the charity organization, and this might require a lot of effort. For this reason, heuristics are often used to make a similar process easier. The present dissertation focuses on how anchors, presented as social information can influence decisions related to charity giving. On the one side, individuals can simply anchor to numbers they read on a sheet of paper (which represent the average amount of money that others’ donate) as a result of the intuitive thinking. On the other hand, they have to think about the appropriateness of their decision, the objective need of the victim, and other dimensions of the charitable cause, which are difficult to appraise. Therefore, donors are likely to follow the reference made by an anchor referring to other people’s behavior and, thanks to the anchoring and adjustment heuristic, there is room to increase donations. The dissertation tested this hypothesis and also explored some of the boundaries of the effect of anchoring and social influence on donation decisions. In three experiments I explored participants’ choices when different anchors are used (or not). In Experiment 1, two groups of participants were informed about low versus high average donations of other people, and a third control group did not receive any information about others’ behavior. The results showed that participants were willing to donate significantly more in the high-anchor condition compared to the low-anchor condition, as well as about the same amount of money in the low-anchor condition and no-anchor condition. Experiment 2 and 3 showed that high anchors are more effective when the information about others’ donations informs about the behavior of members of an ingroup rather than an outgroup. However, the group belongingness of the charity target did not have a significant effect on the results. The theoretical relevance of the results is discussed in relation to the past work on prosocial behavior. Furthermore, the practical implications for the humanitarian aid organizations and fund raising campaigns are discussed
Author: Dorina Hysenbelli
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W99752510