@misc{10481/107923,
year = {2025},
month = {11},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/10481/107923},
abstract = {The evidence on the influence of rational appeals on moral behavior remains inconclusive. The opportunity to donate to a charity provides a fruitful applied case
to test the details that might explain the mixed results. Previous studies have demonstrated the power of emotional appeals to induce participants to donate, while
different rational appeals vary in their performance. Our paper presents the results
of three pre-registered experiments comparing how much participants were willing
to donate via direct cash transfers when exposed to different conditions. Experiment
1 tested five conditions. Three are vignette-based: Narrative, our emotional textual
prompt, presents the testimony of an identified recipient, while Argument presents
a Singer-style argument for charitable giving, and Facts consists of the numerical
results of an evaluation of a cash transfer program. The other two conditions are
based on perspective-taking exercises with either a reasonable donor or a suffering
recipient, designed to elicit empathy with the beneficiaries. As predicted, the average amount donated in the control condition was significantly lower than in each
of the other five conditions. Narrative performed best, significantly better than all
other conditions. Among the rational conditions, Facts performed better descriptively. Its success is surprising given the poor performance of adding numerical
information in other studies. After a replication with the vignette conditions in Experiment 2, we tested two variations of our Facts condition to explore how numerical information was taken into consideration. The numerical information in Large
Numbers conveyed a highly effective intervention, while those in Small Numbers
presented a barely positive impact. Since both variations generated roughly the
same average donation amount, it seems that the numbers were not processed as
numerical information.},
organization = {Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Grant 391304769)},
organization = {Agencia Estatal de Investigación (RYC2022-035285-I)},
publisher = {Springer},
keywords = {X-phi},
keywords = {Altruism},
keywords = {Moral psychology},
title = {Altruistic Behavior in Charitable Giving: a Comparison between Rational, Numerical, and Emotional Prompts},
doi = {10.1007/s13164-025-00785-w},
author = {Vieira, Celso and Wiegmann, Alex and Horvath, Joachim},
}