The psychology of charitable giving

What are the psychological factors that drive charitable donations? Is there a psychological gap between rich and poorer donors in preferences for charitable interventions? These are the questions we seeked to answer in a vignette study conducted on more than 700 U.S. participants. Consistent with predictions from the psychology of poverty literature, we found that socio-economic status drives preferences for and donations to unconventional, long-oriented charities with distant beneficiaries, and that this association is partly explained by different psychological characteristics (openness to experience, time discounting, trust) in donors. In the coming year, we plan to replicate this across more than a dozen countries, aiming at showing that there is a systematic psychological gap in charitable preferences according to socio-economic status cross-culturally. To achieve this, we will need to extend our experimental design to country-specific needs. We are also eager to understand whether a similar gap can be observed between donors' preferences, who often come from richer background, and beneficiaries needs, who often come from more disadvantaged backgrounds. You can join this project now, and continue this project during the second semester, with the possibility of becoming an author of the final article. By joining our team, you will also be invited to the weekly ESC lab meetings (with pizza), and become part of lab life. Please contact us if you have any questions or would like to chat!