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1. Socio-Affective Traits Mediating Charitable Giving

   Arroyo, L; Liljeholm, M (July 2023, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society)

   This study explored the influence of various socio-affective factors on charitable giving, using an online task in which participants could choose to exert time and effort that was translated into monetary donations. Participants had the option of making Public Donations, Anonymous Donations, or No Donations. Moreover, some participants were given Social Information (SI) regarding the percentage of Public vs. Anonymous donations obtained in a pilot study. We found that the proportion of Public Donations increased with greater scores on the Narcissistic Entitlement & Exploitativeness scale (NPI EE), but only in the SI group. Conversely, the proportion of Anonymous Donations decreased with greater NPI EE scores, in the No Social Information group (NSI). In the absence of Social Information, Simulated Compassion scores (SCS), indicative of social approval seeking, decreased the proportion of No Donation decisions as well as the average amount donated. Finally, Social Information modulated the proportion of Public donations. 

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2. Thinking, good and bad? Deliberative thinking and the singularity effect in charitable giving.

   Moche, Hajdi; Gordon-Hecker, Tom; Kogut, Tehila; Vastfjall, Daniel (January 2022, Judgment and decision making)

   Can deliberation increase charitable giving when giving is impulsive (i.e., a one-time small gift in response to an immediate appeal)? We conduct two studies in Israel and Sweden to compare two forms of deliberation, unguided and guided, in their ability to decrease the singularity effect (i.e., giving more to one than many victims), often evident in impulsive giving. Under unguided deliberation, participants were instructed to simply think hard before making a donation decision whereas participants in the guided deliberation condition were asked to think how much different prespecified decision attributes should influence their decision. We find that both types of deliberation reduce the singularity effect, as people no longer value the single victim higher than the group of victims. Importantly, this is driven by donations being decreased under deliberation only to the single victim, but not the group of victims. Thus, deliberation affects donations negatively by overshadowing the affective response, especially in situations in which affect is greatest (i.e., to a single victim). Last, the results show that neither type of deliberation significantly reversed the singularity effect, as people did not help the group significantly more than the single victim. This means that deliberate thinking decreased the overall willingness to help, leading to a lower overall valuation of people in need. 

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3. Unit asking—a method for increasing donations: A replication and extension

   Karlsson, H. (January 2020, Judgment and decision making)

   null (Ed.)

   We replicate and extend unit asking – a method to increase donations by first asking donors for their willingness to donate for one unit and then asking for donations for multiple units (Hsee, Zhang & Xu, 2013) We conducted a large scale replication and extension using a 2 (unit asking, control) x 3 (domains; children (original), animals, environment) between-subjects design. Across three domains, we find that unit asking increased donations, suggesting that this method can be used to increase giving to different charitable causes. 

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4. Structure and Dynamics of a Charitable Donor Co-Attendance Network

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3625007.3627295  

   Srikanta, Shwetha Koushik_Manchinahalli; Pierce, Katie L; Introne, Joshua E; Mohan, Chilukuri K; Soundarajan, Sucheta (November 2023, ACM)

   The dynamics of charitable donor co-attendance networks can help fundraisers assess and improve fundraising outcomes. To improve understanding of donor-giving patterns, this study examines a large, multi-year network describing the co-attendance of donors at charitable fundraising events. We analyze the dynamics of co-attendance networks based on their topological structure, shift in node characteristics, and various network properties. Among other results, we observe a 76% increase in giving value for donors that showed increased centrality rank over nonoverlapped snapshots. In the data we examined, 19.14% of the donors whose giving increased and 16.24% of donors that remained in the same giving range exhibited increased co-attendance with high-capacity donors, whereas none of the donors that shifted to a lower class exhibited increased co-attendance with high-capacity donors over the periods, potentially illustrating a positive peer effect on donors. Some similarity was also observed in the giving characteristics of donors who co-attend events, with a 0.211 assortativity coefficient for the giving class of donors as a characteristic of donors when considering network dynamics using a rolling window size of 3 years. This is followed by analyzing the group-level similarities that reveal an interlinked clique of communities with diverse sizes. Our results show that large communities have a higher fraction of wealthy donors. 

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5. Exogenous Self-Blame Modulates Charitable Giving

   Arroyo, L; Liljeholm, M (July 2024, Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society)

   The current study used a real-time interactive ‚Äúadvisor-decider‚Äù task, in which advice given by one participant results in an onerous workload for another participant, to show that self-conscious affect based on performance in one domain shapes decisions to engage in prosocial behavior in an unrelated domain: Advisors that performed at or worse than the norm, in terms of giving incorrect advice, made more frequent subsequent charity donations. Intriguingly, when advisors were given social information about their performance relative to the norm, this pattern was reversed, such that advisors that performed worse than the norm made less frequent donations. We interpret this finding as reflecting a shift in the emotion driving the behavior, from guilt to shame. Consistent with this interpretation, trait measures of guilt proneness but not of shame proneness predicted an increase in both the probability and magnitude of donations. 

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