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This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vietam. The holiday season is a time of giving to our friends and loved ones, but also to strangers, in the form of donations or charity. On this week's episode, we'll explore the psychology of giving. We'll look at what motivates us to give to charities.
Once they see that there's a solicitor at the door, they say, Oh my God, I wish I would have stayed on the couch watching the football game. Why it's okay to be a re-gifter, and why sometimes, lying to small children, can be a gift. Fair point, but I just think you've totally lost our eating under-demographic. Finally, well-known philanthropist Adam Cole is back.
He's going to give us the gift of music and tie the episode together with a song. Inspired by those really cheesy Christmas specials in which children dance around in brightly colored sweaters. Lots of us make charitable donations over the holiday season. Maybe you'll write a few checks, maybe you'll donate online, or maybe you'll get asked directly at a shopping mall or the grocery store.
But what motivates you to give? And is it a change with a situation? One of our producers, Maggie Penman and our new assistant, Max Nestrack, went to investigate. So Max and I went to the giant in Silver Spring, Maryland.
It's a big suburban grocery store, very busy on a Saturday afternoon, but we came not to shop, but for another reason. Right, we waited in front of the Salvation Army collection. We met a nice woman there named Lisa Ingram, with a Santa hat on, said, Naughty. She was ringing her bell and people were dropping in a loose change, a few dollar bills.
I saw someone put a tenon. We really wanted to know why. And the first person we talked to was Charles J. Barber Jr.
He seemed like a really popular guy, even in our very short interview he kept getting interrupted by his friends walking by. But hey, yeah, yeah, you do it. But he said for him it's about being able to empathize with people who are in need. Some of us are just a stone's throw away from being in a bad place, too, so hopefully this helps people who need it.
Next there was Dorell Bechton. I mean, it'll change that I have. I mean, every little bit counts. I mean, I mean, every penny counts, whatever you can do, just be able to reach out and help.
Stella Lohr was at the store with a friend. She bought me some tea that costs almost $4 or so, I said, well, I just say $4. Pay forward. Exactly, so I'm just gonna pay for it.
Next we talk to Lee Schennacher. I just give in general, I hadn't lose change, so what's that? Does it make you feel good when you give? Oh, I suppose so.
And finally, we talk to Bonnie Scott. So why did you put a dollar in the bucket? Well, I like to see people being helped. So why not give them a dollar when I see them?
Do you give every time you see the Salvation Army bucket? Yes, I'm guilty. And why do you think you always have every time you go to a store around this time of year? Why do you feel like you have to give a dollar?
People need right now. So why not? So there you have it, Chunker. People give because they want to help.
Because it makes me feel good. And because they want to pay it forward. That was Maggie Perman and Max Nestrack, with a lot of very sweet people at the grocery store showing us the positive side of generosity. But there's also a more cynical tape.
And that was summarized in a recent episode of South Park, where Stan's dad, Randy Marsh, gets pressure to donate a dollar at the checkout line at a very socially conscious Whole Foods. OK, Sarah, looks like your total is $37.83. All right? OK, and would you like to add a dollar donation to help hungry kids around the world?
Oh, uh, no, that's OK. Sorry. I'm good. I'm sorry.
You don't want to give the dollar to hungry kids? Not today, thank you. OK, no problem. Windows going to come up and ask if you're helping the hungry kids?
Just hit no, I'm not. Come on. Try hitting it again. It's the box below the one that says, sure I'd love to help however I can.
Darn thing, sorry. Most people give the dollar. I can do this manually. Look, I give money to charity a lot, OK?
Oh, sure you do. I do. I just don't want to every time I shop for food. That's completely understandable.
Have customers speak on it. Oh, you can just speak into the voice decoder and say I'm not giving anything to the hungry kids. I'm not giving anything to the hungry kids. So which version of generosity is right?
The positive, life-affirming people that Maggie and Max talk with? Or the guilt-truck philanthropist at the checkout line? I recently had a conversation about this with all things considered host, Arty Cornish. We talked about why the reasons you think you give may not actually be the real reason.
So this is the time of year as I say, when people are perceived as being more charitable. But is it all altruistic? Well, when you ask people why they're generous, they will tell you that it is all about altruism, that they love a cause or they like to give. But scientists have increasingly started to test these claims, Arty.
I spoke with economist John List, he's at the University of Chicago. He's conducted a number of experiments into why people give and he explained to me why he thinks this is important to do. Any time you ask someone why did you give to this charitable cause, the typical response is, I gave because I really want to help another person. But when you actually dig down deeper, that's not the true motive for why they gave.
And that's exactly why we need field experiments to try to disentangle reasons why people give. And I understand, Shaka, one of the reasons may be social pressure, right? And he does some experiments to try and make that case. That's right.
So List thinks that social pressure might be playing a very powerful role. And he asked me to think about a scenario that's going to be familiar to lots of us. Here's again. I'm the college watching a football game and you hear somebody knocking on the door and you think, okay, should I get up or should I stay watching the football game?
Of course, a lot of people get up and answer the door. But once they see that there's a solicitor at the door, they say, oh my God, I wish I would have stayed on the couch watching the football game. Right. So basically you feel like you've been put on the spot.
Exactly. And List realized that this scenario provides the perfect mechanism for an experiment that tries to find out how much social pressure plays a role in altruism. List send volunteers into various Chicago neighborhoods to solicit money for a children's hospital, but there was a catch-all. Some households just got a cold call and knock on the door.
Others were alerted ahead of time that someone was going to be knocking on their door and asking for money. A third group was told that a knock was coming and given the choice to opt out, they could say they didn't want to be disturbed. Now, if people were giving only because of altruism, it shouldn't matter whether they know ahead of time that a knock is coming. But List finds that when households are alerted ahead of time, the number of people who answer that knock on the door, it falls by a quarter.
When people are given the choice to opt out and say they don't want to be disturbed, donations fall by nearly half. And what List says to show is is how much social pressure shapes generosity? What you find is that roughly three quarters of the dollars given are due to do with a social pressure and a quarter of the dollars given is actually due to altruism. Of course, Ardi, we should mention that this was one experiment in one setting.
There are lots of other reasons why people might want to give. People write checks in the privacy of their own homes where there's no social pressure. But in this kind of situation, and there are many like it, you encounter somebody at the door of a store as you're leaving. Or maybe you're at church and people are passing the collection plate.
It's situations like that where social pressure probably plays an enormous role. So the idea that you're basically uncomfortable saying no to someone's face, right? Exactly. So in this experiment, you don't want the person at the door to think that you're a jerk for not wanting to help a children's hospital.
The dilemma, Ardi, is that for charities, putting people on the spot is effective, but it might be effective only in the short term because people don't like to be pressured, and they're going to find ways to dodge it. List, in fact, believes that charities need to focus on the 25% of people who are genuinely motivated by altruism, because this is the group of people who are likely to be your long term supporters. So what are some of the other strategies that charities and others have found to get us to open our wallets? You know, Ardi, there are literally dozens of different things that people have tried.
One of them is that when a charity sends you a gift, maybe they send you a calendar, the norm of reciprocity dictates that you send something back to them in exchange. Another idea is that if you can get people to donate their time to a cause, they're more likely to follow up with donations because people's wallets follow their feet. I'm feeling a little guilty now for my introduction, right? Norms of the holiday season, right?
This is the time of year to give. Does that also create a form of social pressure? You can think about social norms exactly as a larger example of social pressure at work. If you're at a workplace and everyone's writing checks to charities or doing things that are charitable, you feel kind of obliged to do the same.
Junker, thanks so much for explaining it. Thank you so much, Ardi. After the short break, Dan Pink is back for another round of stopwatch signs. We'll give you some tips on how to be more generous and give better gifts.
We'll also tell you about the downside of altruism. After this. Starting a business is Toph Shopify makes it easier. Build a beautiful store, right with AI and manage marketing, inventory and shipping all in one place.
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Welcome back. We have more ideas about charity and gift giving in our next stopwatch science segment. I'm joined as usual by senior stopwatch science correspondent Daniel Ping. Hi Dan.
As we've heard in the previous segment, altruism is a complicated thing. It makes people feel warm and happy, but it's also driven by social pressure and public norms. On this edition of stopwatch science, Dan and I will present two ideas each from social science research looking at the science of generosity. We get 60 seconds to present each idea.
And as we approach the 60 second mark, our producers will gently bring up the music like they do at the Oscars. Dan, if you're ready, your first 60 seconds starts now. OK, let's say you're choosing a holiday gift for a friend and you're deciding between two video games. Now, one game is high-end and super cool, but it takes a while to learn.
The other is more ordinary. It's easy to start playing, but the game is just medium quality and less nifty. Which gift would you rather give? And which would your friend rather receive?
Now, those questions are at the heart of a fascinating paper last year in the Journal of Consumer Research. Over eight experiments, researchers found that givers consistently chose desirability, special gifts even if they're a hassle, like that turbocharged video game or a gift certificate to a great Italian restaurant that's an hour away. But receivers consistently valued feasibility just as much. They were equally happy with that easy to play video game or a gift card to an OK Italian restaurant around the corner.
When we sell a gift for people, we often aim for desirability. We want to pick something special, unique, unforgettable. But it turns out that the people on the receiving end, they don't much care. They're just as happy with gifts that are easy, convenient, and practical.
I love that dad, and I think this speaks to something that you brought up before on Stopwatch Science, which is that we are often really bad at reading other people's minds. We're terrible at it, and we don't know it. So there's some workarounds that we can do. For instance, Francesca Gino, who's a friend of the show, has a great paper from a few years ago showing that the best way to select a gift for someone is to ask them what they want rather than try to divine it through telepathy.
Alright, I get the message. Dad, what do you want for Christmas? Oh, let's see. Well, actually my coffee maker broke.
So I really just, I actually need a coffee maker pretty badly, and not a fancy one with special little valves and things that steam and work things around, just a regular working man's coffee maker. Alright, consider that. Alright, Chonk, are your 60 seconds starts right now. Many of us think that learning a musical instrument or becoming a gymnast are skills that can be learned or improved with practice.
But we don't think of generosity and altruism the same way. We don't think of compassion as a skill when in fact there's evidence that you can train yourself to be more compassionate. Helen Wang and Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, along with other researchers, they train volunteers to think kindly about others, to cultivate compassion, both for loved ones as well as for strangers. They find in a study published in the Journal of Psychological Science that when you do this for 30 minutes a day for two weeks, volunteers become more likely to act compassionately towards strangers who are in need of help.
In other words, mental training alone can change your ability to respond to the suffering of others. They also find very interestingly, there's evidence using fMRI scanners that there are changes in the brain areas of volunteers who get the training. And these brain areas include the inferior parietal cortex and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. That's fascinating and heartening.
And you know, Martin Seligman years ago wrote a book called Learned Optimism, based on his research and learned helplessness. So what we're talking here is learned compassion, which would be, no joke, a really great gift in the holidays. I think that's right. And it's part of a larger body of work than his positive psychology, looking at how psychology can help us understand the best of ourselves, not just the worst of ourselves.
But Dan, I'm gonna turn it over to you for your second study. Your next 60-second starts right now. Okay, here's a less exalted scenario, right? Someone gives me a present, say a watch.
I open it and think, yeah, it's not my style. So I stick it in a new box, re-wrap it, and give it to my brother. It's called Re-Gifting! And it's offensive, right?
A social taboo. Well, a set of studies by Gabriel Adams at the London Business School says, maybe not, Adams and colleagues at Harvard and Stanford set up several experiments in which some people were gift-givers and others were gift-receivers. Then they had some of the receivers repackage their gifts and give them to someone else. Turns out, over and over again, the re-gifters overestimated how much the givers of the original gift would be offended.
They thought the givers would be shocked, hurt, appalled by the re-gifting. But most givers said, hey, it's your gift now. The title has essentially passed to you. Do whatever you want.
The stigma of re-gifting wasn't much of a stigma at all. Dan, I wanna thank you for sanctioning my inner re-gifter. I feel completely liberated now in ways that should be very interesting to watch over the next few weeks. Oh, that's great because I got a really special present for you, high and desirability, but really difficult to you.
So you just give it to somebody else and you'll feel better. All right, now, you're 60 seconds for your study, Shankar starts right now. All right, this is also a study that looks at altruism. Except Dan, it looks at the downside of altruism.
It's a study by a friend of the show, Francesca Gino at the Harvard Business School. You just mentioned her a moment ago. Along with Shaharayal and Dan Ariali, Gino found that people are more likely to cheat when their behavior is hidden. That's not surprising.
Here's a part of her study that caught my eye. When people feel that they're cheating, can help another person, as well as themselves, cheating goes up substantially. When being dishonest can help an entire group, cheating goes up even more. What's fascinating to me here, Dan, is how the hidden brain weaves together these different motives.
One thing to help others is a good thing. In this case, people use a positive motive to justify being dishonest. Now, I know it's the holiday season, Dan, but I'm gonna make a little editorial statement here. One of the things that many of us do is rely to children about the existence of Santa Claus.
We perpetrate this act of mass dishonesty, but we do it because we say it's in the common good. Fair point, but I just think you've totally lost our eating under demographic. All right, there you have it. Gifts that are useful, train yourself to be more compassionate, beware of the downside of altruism, and re-gift shamelessly.
If you get caught, tell people, Dan, think told you to do it. Dan, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure, I think. That was Daniel Pink, our senior stopwatch science correspondent and ace gift giver.
Can't wait to see what you got me for Christmas, Dan. We have one last segment for you this holiday. Adam called us back to tie this episode together with a song. Adam, welcome back to Hidden Brain.
Thanks so much for having me. Did you put in hours and hours of work to create this original song for us, Adam? Well, I put in a lot of hours listening to the episode, and I put in a lot of hours listening to holiday music to get inspiration since this is a holiday episode. So yeah, put together a little piece, sort of inspired by those really cheesy Christmas specials in which children dance around in brightly colored sweaters.
Wonderful, and did you do this all by yourself, Adam? I don't want to do half-help. Well, you know, I actually got some help from your producer, Maggie Penman, she sings on this song. Oh, cool.
And there's also a special guest appearance by someone you said doesn't exist. I can't wait to hear this. The chestnuts are roasting, and shonker stopped hosting, so he could go out and sled. There's jingle bells, belling, and our hearts are swelling, and Dan Pink is yelling about something he read.
We're full of Christmas cheer, but let's make one thing very clear. Gives you giver thoughtful, but they're also often awful. Just give us what we asked for. It's easy.
It's a machine they're hard to know, but it's hard to enter in. But we'll take your coffee maker and piece of pizza down the street. If you open the gift, we'll never be fine. We'll just re-gift it.
You won't mind, but it would be terrific. You gave us the specific thing that we asked for in Christmas. No, hold on a minute. Santa Claus?
Yes, it's me, and I dare to tell you, you're terrible. This isn't the season of receiving. The season of altruism. Algebraism?
Sound plain, Santa? Yeah, what do you know? You're just an act of mass vis-à-visity perpetrate annually for the sake of children. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm the living embodiment of the spirit of giving, but I wasn't always that way. Before my current role, I up at the North Pole, I was a mean old elf. No. Just like the Grinch, my heart, it was pinched, and I only thought of myself.
But then I practiced carrying 13 minutes every day. And my Dorso lateral prefrontal cortex slowly began to change. I don't know, Santa, I'm practicing everything. Sound like a lot of work.
No, four years. A lot of people don't practice compassion. They're only generous when they think people are watching. That's why I watch from my sleigh both night and day.
A jolly one-man NSA. So if someone falls is at your door, I'll see if you turn them away. If you don't help people with their problems, you'll take my list and not the nice part of it's my duty and my pleasure to apply the social pressure so people will be selfless. Grissph!
I... No! No! Merry Christmas Maggie!
Merry Christmas, Adam! Merry Christmas, Santa! Merry Christmas, Mr. Stairs!
No! I'm watching you! That was fantastic, Adam! Well, thank you so much.
I clearly stand corrected. For all your kids out there, you clearly heard two different voices. Santa is on the episode, on tape, so Santa Claus exists, and I was wrong. That's right.
I'm glad that you are a big enough man to do that. Adam, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. Hidden Brain is produced by Karamogar-Garlesson and Maggie Pennman, our new assistant is Max Nestrach.
Special thanks this week to Daniel Pink and Adam Cole. For more Hidden Brain, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Our weekly newsletter gives you lots of valuable tips. Send an email to hiddenbrain at npr.org with the word subscribe in the subject line.
I'm Shaka Vittatun, and this is NPR. Starting a business is tough. Shopify makes it easier. Build a beautiful store, write with AI, and manage marketing, inventory, and shipping all in one place.
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