Moral psychology from the lab to the wild: Relief registries as a paradigm for studying real-world altruism

Abstract

Experimental psychology’s recent shift toward low-effort, high-volume methods (e.g., self-reports, online studies) and away from the more effortful study of naturalistic behavior raises concerns about the ecological validity of findings from these fields, concerns that have become particularly apparent in the field of moral psychology. To help address these concerns, we introduce a method allowing researchers to investigate an important, widespread form of altruistic behavior–charitable donations–in a manner balancing competing concerns about internal validity, ecological validity, and ease of implementation: relief registries, which leverage existing online gift registry platforms to allow research subjects to choose among highly needed donation items to ship directly to charitable organizations. Here, we demonstrate the use of relief registries in two experiments exploring the ecological validity of the finding from our own research that people are more willing to help others after having imagined themselves doing so. In this way, we sought to provide a blueprint for researchers seeking to enhance the ecological validity of their own research in a narrow sense (i.e., by using the relief registry method we introduce) and in broader terms by adapting methods that take advantage of modern technology to directly impact others’ lives outside the lab.

Modulatory effects of transcranial direct current stimulation of right insula on compassion motivation

“…It is indeed well reported that fear of compassion for self correlates strongly with fear of compassion to others (e.g., Gilbert et al., 2011 ). In order to clarify whether the lack of effects on altruistic behavior were due to the inadequacy of the Redistribution Game to detect the desired effect, replications would be needed i) adopting more than a single task, ii) testing prosocial behavior in more than one occasion, and iii) including behaviors that are less “artificial”, such as for example the intention or attitude toward donating ( Bo O'Connor et al., 2022 ). It is also possible that the absence of behavioral effects is due to the limited duration of the stimulation protocol (i.e., a single 15-min tDCS session).…”