The post Kononov, N., & Ein-Gar, D. (2024). Prosocial Behavior Enhances Evaluation of Physical Beauty. appeared first on The Giving Lab - Danit Ein-Gar.

The post Kononov, N., Ein-Gar, D., & Puntoni, S. (2024). Physical appearance improvements increase prosocial behavior. appeared first on The Giving Lab - Danit Ein-Gar.

The post Kononov, N., & Ein-Gar, D. (2023). Beautiful Strangers: Physical Evaluation of Strangers Is Influenced by Friendship Expectation. appeared first on The Giving Lab - Danit Ein-Gar.

Bareket, O., Ein-Gar, D., & Kogut, T. (2023). I will help you survive but not thrive: Helping decisions in situations that empower women. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

This research examines gender-based helping behavior from a social dominance perspective. We focused on the interplay between the gender of a prospective donor and the gender of the recipient in shaping donation decisions in contexts that either empower recipients or not. In two studies (N = 866), male (but not female) donors chose to donate less often (Study 2) and to give lower amounts (Studies 1–2) to women in need than to men when donations were made in a potentially empowering context – a business context (e.g., donating to a person whose shop burned down), than in a nonempowering context – a domestic context (e.g., donating to a person whose house burned down). Lack of empathy for the female recipient among men partially mediated this gender–donation bias effect (Study 2). These findings suggest that men are less likely to help women in situations that empower women and challenge the existing gender hierarchy.

Link to the full paper

The post Bareket, O., Ein-Gar, D., & Kogut, T. (2023). I will help you survive but not thrive: Helping decisions in situations that empower women. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations appeared first on The Giving Lab - Danit Ein-Gar.

The post Ma, J., Lin, Y. A., & Ein-Gar, D. (2023). Charitable maximizers: The impact of the maximizing mindset on donations to human recipients. appeared first on The Giving Lab - Danit Ein-Gar.

Ein-Gar, D., & Give’on, A. (2022). The Influence of Proportion Dominance and Global Need Perception on Donations. Frontiers in Psychology

Many donation-raising platforms request that first-time donors choose the charitable causes they most care about so that future campaign recommendations can best match donors’ charitable preferences. While matching charitable campaigns to donors’ reported preferences has its benefits, little is known about other effects that choosing charitable causes may evoke. We focus on how choosing charitable causes influences charitable behavior. We find two effects of the number of charitable causes donors choose on their subsequent charitable behavior. In studies 1 and 2, we show that a reference number of the maximum charitable causes donors can choose has a negative effect on charitable behavior. A small (versus large) reference number yields a greater likelihood to donate and a higher donation amount. This effect is aligned with the proportion dominance rationalization. In studies 3 and 4, we show that the number of charitable causes donors voluntarily choose as important to them is positively associated with subsequent charitable behavior. This association is mediated by global need perception. As the number of causes donors choose increases, donors experience an escalation in their perception of global neediness, which in turn motivates their willingness to donate and the donation amount. In Study 5, we show how the two effects together shape charitable behavior. These effects are observed while controlling the donors’ inherent prosocial attitudes toward help giving. With more than 1.5 million registered non-profit organizations operating in the United States (National Center for Charitable Statistics, 2019), it has become almost impossible for donors to easily choose which charitable campaigns to support. Online charitable fundraising platforms (e.g., One Today by Google, Round Up, and Charity Miles), websites (e.g., AmazonSmile) and crowdfunding platforms (e.g., Fundly, JustGiving, and GoFundMe) try to ease donors’ search and decision processes by offering them personalized charitable options. First-time donors are asked to indicate the charitable causes they care most about, and then asked to donate to charitable campaigns that best match their preferences. Interestingly, little is known about how this initial stage of choosing charitable causes influences subsequent donation behavior. In this research, we ask how choosing the charitable causes one cares most about influences subsequent response to a charitable appeal. Obviously, the mere selection of preferred causes enables charities to offer personalized campaigns and create a better fit between non-profits and donors, which has a generally positive effect on charitable giving. However, in this research we focus on an overlooked aspect of these practices. We examine how the number of charitable causes donors indicate as important to them influences their donation giving. We test two opposite effects: the proportion dominance effect, an effect driven by prior research, and the global need perception effect, a new effect identified in this article. Both effects are driven by the number of causes donors choose.

Link to the full paper

The post Ein-Gar, D., & Give’on, A. (2022). The Influence of Proportion Dominance and Global Need Perception on Donations. Frontiers in Psychology appeared first on The Giving Lab - Danit Ein-Gar.

Ein‐Gar, D., Levontin, L., & Kogut, T. (2021). The Adverse Effect of Choice in Donation Decisions. Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Many charitable organizations offer potential donors the option to choose their donation recipients – suggesting that organizations perceive the availability of such choice as beneficial to donation raising.

Building upon research on choice aversion in the context of consumer goods and on the identifiable victim effect in the context of donation giving, we propose that the need to choose one target among multiple needy targets might, in fact, hinder donations.

Results of six studies show that when prospective donors are asked to choose between two similar donation targets, they are more likely to opt out of donating altogether than when asked to donate to a single target.

We show that the effect of choice on opt-out rates in donation settings is driven by the conflict between the wish to be helpful and the wish to be fair.
We further show that when the conflict is resolved and the choice does not raise fairness concerns, the effect is attenuated and opt-out rates decline.

https://myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jcpy.1230

The post Ein‐Gar, D., Levontin, L., & Kogut, T. (2021). The Adverse Effect of Choice in Donation Decisions. Journal of Consumer Psychology. appeared first on The Giving Lab - Danit Ein-Gar.

Physical appearance is an important part of one’s identity. Most people actively manage their appearance to look better. However, such activities are considered self-centered and are often associated with vanity. With advancements in technology, more practices help us improve our appearance (Botox, laser hair removal, beard trimming, professional makeup), does that mean we are becoming less focused on others and less pro-social?

In this project we show when and why after engaging in physical improvements practices people behave more pro-socially and specifically donate more.

The goal of this project is to help unravel motivations to engage in pro-social behavior which are activated in today’s lifestyle and social norms. This projects focuses on one common lifestyle aspect (consumption of physical improvements practices) which intuitively benefits the self, and to show that it may also have a positive benefit for others in the form of donation giving.

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What happens when we are faced with many options? Research has shown that a maximizing mindset is activated. The maximizing mindset is characterized by two features: holding a goal of choosing the best and applying a strategy of comparing options.

Given that individuals constantly receive donation requests; it is only reasonable to assume that many donation decisions are made under a maximizing mindset.

This project focuses on how the maximizing mindset influences charitable behavior:

• Do maximizers respond more to emotional charitable appeals or to rational charitable appeals?
• Do they engage more in comparing their (better off life-situation) to that of the individuals requesting aid?
• Do they experience more regret after deciding to help one person in need over another?

The goal of this project is to help charities understand which charitable appeals match donors’ common mindset in this world of abundance – the maximizing mindset – and what motivations can these appeals activated to enhance giving.

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We make consumption choices every day; which coffee to order at Starbucks? Which shoes to buy on Amazon? But making consumption choices is inherently different than making donation choices.

Comparing between people in need is not as easy as comparing between shoes. Why? Because donation choices impact others’ lives. Even if it may be easy to asses who is needier, choosing to help a particular person and not someone else, still means not helping someone in need, which can be emotionally burdening.

This project focuses on the dilemmas donors face and how they deal with them when they encounter several people in need and must choose whom (and how much) to help.

The goal of this project is to help charity raising platforms such as international charities running several campaigns dedicated to helping many people in need, design customized choice-set of donation requests (i.e. several campaigns each featuring a different person in need), which enable donors to choose whom to help and to feel good about their decision.

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