Opportunity Cost in Monetary Donation Decisions to Non-identified and Identified Victims

Moche, Hajdi; Erlandsson, Arvid; Andersson, David; Västfjäll, Daniel

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03035

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 57 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Further, guided deliberation might need to be better adapted to the appeal at hand or to the separate evaluation mode. For example, in impulsive giving, making people aware of the opportunity cost of other charity appeals when seeing an appeal (Moche et al, 2020) might create a mode closer to that of the joint evaluation mode, and thereby affect the singularity effect (see Caviola et al, 2020). Another possibility is to make participants rank the attributes instead of rating them, as this creates an implicit opportunity cost or trade-off thinking as participants are forced to choose which attribute they care most about, or to have participants themselves produce attributes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A previous study by Small et al (2007) also examined the role of deliberation by attempting to increase participants' awareness of a potential bias, the identifiable victim effect, in their impulsive giving decisions. The identifiable victim effect is the tendency to feel more affect for and, thus, to help identified victims, about whom they receive some information, more than unidentified victims (Kogut & Ritov, 2005a;2011;Lee & Feeley, 2016;Moche et al, 2020). Compared to the singularity effect, the conditions in the identifiable victim effect usually do not differ in number of needy people (e.g., one vs. ten children), but differ only in the level of identifiability (e.g., one identified child vs. one non-identified child; Kogut & Ritov, 2005b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

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

et al. 2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Related, we found that people who actively chose to keep the money for themselves had significantly higher life satisfaction than people who passively received money for themselves. A possible explanation for this finding comes from research on opportunity cost (Moche et al, 2020), showing that increased awareness of alternative uses of money may act as a reference point for comparison (Greenberg & Spiller, 2016). Participants who passively received the money did not know about the prosocial option, whereas participants who made an active decision knew of both options.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

To give or to take money? The effects of choice on prosocial spending and happiness

Moche

Västfjäll

2021

The Journal of Positive Psychology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous studies show that spending money on others makes people happier than spending it on themselves. The present study tested and extended this idea by examining the role of active versus passive choice and default choices. Here, 788 participants played and won money in a game, from which some of the earnings could be donated to charity. Participants were randomized to five conditions (control, passive or active choice, default to self or charity). Three measures of subjective well-being (SWB) were used. The results show that people who donated money were happier than people who kept money for themselves, and that active choices elicited significantly more negative affects than passive choices. Also, more people chose to keep the money when this was the default. Last, the greatest effect on happiness was to change from the set default. The results are in line with previous findings in positive psychology and decision making.

show abstract

“…Illustrated differently, people tend to help less when reminded of alternative (possibly more attractive) ways to spend their money (i.e. opportunity costs; Moche et al, 2020).…”

Section: Anticipated Positive Materials Consequences Due To Not Helpingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new typology of psychological mechanisms underlying prosocial decisions

Erlandsson¹,

Moche²,

Dickert³

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Charitable giving, volunteering, climate-friendly choices, and most recently changing one’s lifestyle to stop the spread of the coronavirus are all examples of prosocial behavior. Prosociality can be investigated from different perspectives including the “who-question” (which people are more likely to help), and the “when-question” (which situational factors stimulate helping?), but in this article we focus primarily on the “why-question” (which emotions and cognitions motivate helping?)Specifically, this article tries to organize and synthesize literature related to emotions, thoughts, and beliefs (i.e. psychological mechanisms) that motivate or demotivate human helping behavior. To do this, we present a new typology including four overarching interrelated categories, each encompassing multiple subcategories.(1) Emotions: (a) emotional reactions elicited by the need situation such as empathic concern/sympathy, (b) positive or negative attitudes toward the beneficiary or the requester, (c) incidental mood. (2) Moral principles: (a) personal responsibility, (b) fairness-concerns, (c) aversion towards causing harm. (3) Anticipated impact: (a) self-efficacy (e.g. “can I make a difference?”) and (b) response-efficacy (e.g., “is this cause/project efficient and worthwhile?”). (4) Anticipated personal consequences: (a) material, (b) social and (c) emotional costs and benefits that the helper expects will follow if she helps or if she does not help. Increased knowledge about the “who” (e.g. individual differences in demography or personality) and “when” (situational antecedents such as characteristic of those in need, or type of solicitation) can surely help predict and even increase prosociality, but we argue that to understand the psychology of helping we need to also consider the psychological mechanisms underlying prosocial decisions (the “why-question”).We compare our typology against related theoretical frameworks, and present the pros and cons with different methodological approaches of testing psychological mechanisms of helping, with the aim to help researchers and practitioners better organize and understand the many psychological factors that influence prosocial decisions.

show abstract

Opportunity Cost in Monetary Donation Decisions to Non-identified and Identified Victims

Cited by 13 publications

References 57 publications

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

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

To give or to take money? The effects of choice on prosocial spending and happiness

A new typology of psychological mechanisms underlying prosocial decisions

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About