In social fund-raising, people often praise the poor who donate. Poverty and wealth are important indicators for dividing social strata. In the donation activities in real society, will the social stratum of donors affect their prosocial reputation? Through what? The following is a collection of reasons I collected for you. Let's have a look!
Why is star donation infamous and scavenger donation famous?
Wen: Yuan Liangliang coco said:
The sociality of human beings makes them attach great importance to their prosocial reputation in the eyes of others. People with a good reputation are more likely to be trusted, respected and even helped by others, that is, "good people are rewarded". People can gain prosocial reputation by doing prosocial behavior.
However, people of different social classes do the same prosocial behavior, but they will not get the same prosocial reputation. What information do people give prosocial actors a prosocial reputation based on?
In social fund-raising, people often praise the poor who donate. If the amount of donations is the same, people tend to think that poorer donors are more caring and kind, while richer donors are not generous enough.
Poverty and wealth are important indicators for dividing social strata. In the donation activities in real society, will the social stratum of donors affect their prosocial reputation? Through what?
A study published in the journal Social Psychology by prosocial laboratory researchers explored and explained how donors' social class affects their prosocial reputation through three experiments. The researchers found that people will infer the sincerity of donors' motivation to help others according to their wealth and actual charitable contributions, and then give them a prosocial reputation.
In Study 1, the subjects were randomly presented with the situation of donations from different classes to the earthquake stricken areas, and the subjects were asked to evaluate the sincere motivation of the donors (the extent to which the donors really care about others) and prosociality (the generosity and kindness of the donors, etc.).
It was found that both under the same amount of contributions and the same proportion of contributions (the amount of contributions as a percentage of an individual's annual income), people believed that rich donors had lower sincere motivation to help others than poor donors, so poor donors were given a higher prosocial reputation (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Perceived sincerity motivation and prosocial reputation of donors under different experimental conditions (Study 1)
In the following two studies, the researchers continued to present the information of high-level and low-level donors and kept the same proportion of donations. At the same time, through experimental manipulation, they highlighted the sincere motivation of donors (Study 2) and the social benefits brought by donations (Study 3).
The results show that when people believe that the rich also have sincere motivation to help others, there is no significant difference in their evaluation of the prosocial reputation between the rich and the poor, as shown in Figure 2 (left); When people realize the huge social benefits of the rich's donations, they will also think that they have the prosocial motivation of sincerely caring for others and give them a higher prosocial reputation, as shown in Figure 2 (right).
Figure 2 Prosocial reputation of donors under different experimental conditions in Study 2 (left) and Study 3 (right)
This study shows that people endow donors with prosocial reputation based on their sincere motivation. The more sincere the motivation is, the better the reputation will be.
The reason why the social class of donors affects people's judgment of their behavior motivation may be because people think that the rich have more material resources and the same donation is cheaper for them; People will also think that "high position and heavy responsibility", and the rich should donate money to help others; In addition, people will think that the donation behavior of the rich may be to establish a good reputation. These understandings make people discount the rich's motivation to help others, and then affect the rich's prosocial reputation.
However, when people realize the good social benefits generated by charitable behavior, they will also think that the actors have sincere charitable motivation, and then give them a pro social reputation.
This study provides some enlightenment for charitable fund-raising activities. Because the poor's motivation to help others is easier to be recognized as sincere, it is more likely to become a moral example and inspire others to follow suit; For the prosocial behavior of the rich, in addition to stimulating from the level of responsibility, we also need to emphasize the sincerity of their motivation and the obvious social benefits. Regardless of the social class of the helpers, the whole society should actively affirm their good deeds and encourage people to do good deeds.