The Elephant in the Brain_Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

by Robin Hanson

  When we analyze donation as an economic activity, it soon becomes clear how little we seem to care about the impact of our donations. Whatever we’re doing, we aren’t trying to maximize ROD. One study, for example, asked participants how much they would agree to pay for nets that prevent migratory bird deaths. Some participants were told that the nets would save 2,000 birds annually, others were told 20,000 birds, and a final group was told 200,000 birds. But despite the 10- and 100-fold differences in projected impact, people in all three groups were willing to contribute the same amount.13 This effect, known as scope neglect or scope insensitivity, has been demonstrated for many other problems, including cleaning polluted lakes, protecting wilderness areas, decreasing road injuries, and even preventing deaths.14 People are willing to help, but the amount they’re willing to help doesn’t scale in proportion to how much impact their contributions will make.

  People also prefer to “diversify” their donations, making many small donations rather than a few strategic large ones to the most useful charities.15 Diversification makes sense for investors in capital markets (like the stock market), but not for philanthropists in the charity “market.” The main reason to diversify is to hedge against risk to the beneficiary of the portfolio. But society (the presumed beneficiary of charitable giving) is already thoroughly diversified. There are thousands of well-funded charities taking almost every conceivable approach to helping people. Whether individual donors spread out or concentrate their donations does little to affect the overall allocation. And meanwhile, as the effective altruists convincingly demonstrate, some charities are vastly more effective than others. Giving $3,500 to the Against Malaria Foundation will save a whole human life, while the same amount divided across 100 different charities might go entirely to waste, hardly covering the administrative overhead necessary to collect and process all those separate donations.

  When we evaluate charity-related behaviors, gross inefficiencies don’t seem to bother us. For example, wealthy people often perform unskilled volunteer work (and are celebrated for it), even when their time is worth vastly more on the open market.16 Here’s Miller again:

  The division of labor is economically efficient, in charity as in business. Instead, in most modern cities of the world, we can observe highly trained lawyers, doctors, and their husbands and wives giving up their time to work in soup kitchens for the homeless or to deliver meals to the elderly. Their time may be worth a hundred times the standard hourly rates for kitchen workers or delivery drivers. For every hour they spend serving soup, they could have donated an hour’s salary to pay for somebody else to serve soup for two weeks.17

  These behaviors don’t make sense if we try to explain charity-related behaviors as an attempt to maximize ROD. Something else is going on—but what, exactly? What might we be trying to accomplish with our generosity, if not helping others as efficiently as possible? Are we simply failing in our goals, or do we have other motives?

  “WARM GLOW” THEORY

  In 1989, to explain some of these inefficiencies, the economist James Andreoni proposed a different model for why we donate to charity. Instead of acting strictly to improve the well-being of others,18 Andreoni theorized, we do charity in part because of a selfish psychological motive: it makes us happy. Part of the reason we give to homeless people on the street, for example, is because the act of donating makes us feel good, regardless of the results.19

  Andreoni calls this the “warm glow” theory. It helps explain why so few of us behave like effective altruists. Consider these two strategies for giving to charity: (1) setting up an automatic monthly payment to the Against Malaria Foundation, or (2) giving a small amount to every panhandler, collection plate, and Girl Scout. Making automatic payments to a single charity may be more efficient at improving the lives of others, but the other strategy—giving more widely, opportunistically, and in smaller amounts—is more efficient at generating those warm fuzzy feelings.20 When we “diversify” our donations, we get more opportunities to feel good.

  As an ultimate explanation for our behavior, however, the warm glow theory is just a stopgap.21 The much more interesting and important question is why it feels good when we donate to charity. Digging beneath the shallow psychological motive (pursuing happiness), what deeper incentives are we responding to?

  To figure this out, we’re going to examine five factors that influence our charitable behavior:

  1.Visibility. We give more when we’re being watched.

  2.Peer pressure. Our giving responds strongly to social influences.

  3.Proximity. We prefer to help people locally rather than globally.

  4.Relatability. We give more when the people we help are identifiable (via faces and/or stories) and give less in response to numbers and facts.

  5.Mating motive. We’re more generous when primed with a mating motive.

  This list is far from comprehensive, but taken together, these factors help explain why we donate so inefficiently, and also why we feel that warm glow when we donate. Let’s briefly look at each factor in turn.

  VISIBILITY

  Perhaps the most striking bias in how we do charity is that we give more when we’re being watched. One study found that when door-to-door solicitors ask for donations, people give more when there are two solicitors than when there’s just one.22 But even when it’s a lone solicitor, people donate significantly more when the solicitor makes eye contact with them.23 People also give more when the solicitor can see their donations, compared to when their donations are tucked away in an envelope.24 Even just an image of abstract, stylized “eyespots” makes people more generous.25

  Charities know that people like to be recognized for their contributions. That’s why they commemorate donors with plaques, using larger and more prominent plaques to advertise more generous donations. Exceptionally generous donations are honored by chiseling the benefactor’s name in stone at the top of a building. For smaller contributions, charities often reward donors with branded paraphernalia—pins, T-shirts, tote bags, pink ribbons, yellow wristbands—all of which allow donors to demonstrate to their peers that they’ve donated to worthy causes. (They can literally wear their generosity on their sleeves.) Even blood donors typically walk away with a sticker that says, “I gave blood today.” Other charities help their donors by hosting conspicuous events—places to see and be seen. These include races, walk-a-thons, charity balls, benefit concerts, and even social media campaigns like the “ice bucket challenge.” By helping donors advertise their generosity, charities incentivize more donations.26

  Conversely, people prefer not to give when their contributions won’t be recognized. Anonymous donation, for example, is extremely rare. Only around 1 percent of donations to public charities are anonymous.27 Similarly, in lab experiments, people who donate seldom choose to remain anonymous.28 And even when people donate “anonymously” to public charities, we should be skeptical that their identities are kept completely hidden. “A London socialite once remarked to me that she knew many anonymous donors,” writes Miller. “They were well known within their social circle . . . even though their names may not have been splashed across the newspapers.”29 At the very least, most “anonymous” donors discuss their donations with their spouses and close friends.

  Often charities bracket donations into tiers and advertise only which tier a given donor falls into (rather than an exact dollar amount). For example, someone who gives between $500 and $999 might be called a “friend” or “silver sponsor,” while someone who gives between $1,000 and $1,999 might be called a “patron” or “gold sponsor.” If you donate $900, then, you’ll earn the same label as someone who donates only $500. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of donations to such campaigns fall exactly at the lower end of each tier.30 Put another way: very few people give more than they’ll be recognized for.

  PEER PRESSURE

  Another strong influence on our charitable giving is peer pressure. Although donors often deny this influ
ence,31 the evidence says otherwise. First of all, solicitation works: people donate when they’re asked for money, especially by friends, neighbors, and loved ones. People seldom initiate donations on their own; up to 95 percent of all donations are given in response to a solicitation.32 In-person solicitations, like when someone comes to your door or passes the collection plate at church, work better than impersonal solicitations like direct mail or TV advertisements.33 People are especially likely to donate when the solicitor is a close associate.34

  Certainly some of these effects are due to endorsements: When a friend asks for a donation, it’s likely to be a good cause, whereas if a stranger makes the request, you might suspect it of being fraudulent or otherwise unworthy. But even when a charitable cause is fully vetted, peer pressure is more effective than non-peer pressure. Universities, for example, often solicit donations from alumni by having other alumni from the same class call them up.35 This kind of solicitation is even more effective when the solicitor is a former roommate.36 Here the main relevant variable is the social distance between donor and solicitor.

  Peer pressure plays a big role in many areas of life, of course, but it’s an especially strong influence on charitable decisions. Contrast how we make donations versus other financial decisions like investments and purchases. If we invested like we donate, we’d make 95 percent of our investments in response to a direct request from a friend, family member, church buddy, or even a stranger on the phone. Instead, when friends or strangers solicit investment (“a ground-floor opportunity!”), we typically eye it with suspicion. Similarly, if we made purchases like we donate to charity, we’d see a lot more companies doing door-to-door or in-home sales, like Cutco knife demonstrations or Tupperware parties. Instead these social-selling strategies are the exception rather than the rule; we typically prefer to initiate purchases ourselves in anonymous markets.

  PROXIMITY

  We’re more disposed to help people who are closer to us, not just physically but socially. We’d sooner help people in our local communities than strangers in far-off places. Remember the drowning boy in Peter Singer’s thought experiment? Most of us are eager to save him, but few are as eager to help dying children in other countries. Partly this is because the drowning boy is identifiable (more on this in the next section), but partly it’s due to distance.

  Jonathan Baron and Ewa Szymanska call this bias parochialism. When they surveyed people about their willingness to help people in their own country (the United States) versus children in India, Africa, or Latin America, people showed a distinct preference for helping others in their own country. As one subject commented, “There are just as many needy children in this country and I would help them first.”37

  These survey results are borne out in the data on actual giving. In 2011, Americans donated $298 billion to charity, of which only an estimated 13 percent ($39 billion) went to help foreigners.38 This is hardly the profile of effective charity, since even the neediest Americans are typically better off than many people in developing countries.

  To be fair, parochialism is an inescapable part of human nature, and it’s written all over our behavior. We treat close family better than friends, and friends better than strangers—so it’s no surprise that we often privilege our fellow citizens over people in foreign countries.

  RELATABILITY

  According to Singer, one of the most well-confirmed findings in behavioral studies of altruism is that we’re much more likely to help someone we can identify—a specific individual with a name,39 a face, and a story. First investigated by Thomas Schelling in 1968,40 this phenomenon has since come to be known as the identifiable victim effect. The corresponding downside, of course, is that we’re less likely to help victims who aren’t identifiable. As Joseph Stalin is reported to have said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”41

  Charities that raise a lot of money understand this, which is why they engage in so much storytelling. “Meet Liz Cintron,” the United Way website proudly proclaims, “a senior at Georgetown University and a shining example of how helping one person realize their dreams is a victory for all of us.”42 Liz’s story, perched beneath her bright, beaming smile, is chock-full of personal details. As the charity that raises more money each year than any other charity, United Way clearly knows what it’s doing.43

  Another charity that makes great use of biographical details is the microlending site Kiva.org, which allows donors to make interest-free loans to people in developing countries. Visitors to the website are presented with a wide array of photos, each of which gives way to a human story and a concrete request for help. For example, Maria is a 44-year-old rice farmer from the Philippines asking for $325 to purchase fertilizer for her crops.44 These are real people facing eminently relatable problems.

  Contrast this with the Against Malaria Foundation. Although it saves hundreds of lives every year, it can’t offer names or faces of the people it helps, because it saves only statistical lives. Since it takes roughly 500 mosquito nets to save one life (on average),45 there’s no single individual a donor can point to and say, “I saved this man’s life.” This kind of statistical approach to lifesaving may be effective, but it doesn’t tug as strongly at our heartstrings.

  MATING MOTIVE

  One final factor influencing our generosity is the opportunity to impress potential mates. Many studies have found that people, especially men, are more likely to give money when the solicitor is an attractive member of the opposite sex.46 Men also give more to charity when nearby observers are female rather than male.47

  A particularly illuminating study was carried out in 2007 by the psychologist Vladas Griskevicius along with some of his colleagues.48 Subjects, both male and female, were asked about whether they would engage in various altruistic behaviors. Before hearing the questions, however, they were divided into experimental and control groups and given different tasks to perform. The experimental subjects were primed with a mating mindset, for example, by being asked to imagine an ideal first date.49 The control subjects, meanwhile, were given a similar task, but one completely unrelated to romantic motives.

  Relative to subjects in the control group, subjects in the experimental group (who were primed with mating cues) were significantly more likely to report altruistic intentions.50 The thought of pursuing a romantic partner made them more eager to do good deeds. This, however, was true only of conspicuous good deeds, like teaching underprivileged kids or volunteering at a homeless shelter. When asked about inconspicuous forms of altruism, like taking shorter showers or mailing a letter someone had dropped on the way to the post office, the experimental group was no more likely than the control group to report an interest in such activities.

  APPEARANCES MATTER

  In light of all this evidence, the conclusion is pretty clear. We may get psychological rewards for anonymous donations, but for most people, the “warm fuzzies” just aren’t enough. We also want to be seen as charitable.

  Griskevicius calls this phenomenon “blatant benevolence.” Patrick West calls it “conspicuous compassion.”51 The idea is that we’re motivated to appear generous, not simply to be generous, because we get social rewards only for what others notice. In other words, charity is an advertisement, a way of showing off.

  Now, this is hardly a revelation. Many observers have noticed that people crave recognition for their good deeds. “A millionaire does not really care whether his money does good or not,” said George Bernard Shaw, “provided he finds his conscience eased and his social status improved by giving it away.”52 “Take egotism out,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, “and you would castrate the benefactors.”53

  But while we can recognize this in the abstract, when we actually go to donate money or help people, we strongly prefer not to acknowledge that we’re doing it for the credit or glory. To donate with credit in mind hardly seems like charity at all. In fact, many people feel that the only “true” acts of charity are the perfectly anonymou
s ones.54 And yet, we mostly don’t donate anonymously; we are concerned (at least at an unconscious level) with getting credit. So let’s dig a bit deeper into our showing-off motive. By giving to charity, who, exactly, are we hoping to impress? And which qualities are we trying to advertise?

  Let’s start with the first question. As Griskevicius and Miller argue, one of our primary audiences is potential mates. Giving to charity is, in part, a behavior designed to attract members of the opposite sex.55 Stinginess isn’t sexy. We want mates who will be generous with us and, perhaps more importantly, our future offspring. Note that charities that help children, like Shriners children’s hospitals and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, are especially celebrated.

  But potential mates aren’t our only intended audience. Anecdotally, both men and women are impressed when they learn about a donor’s generosity, irrespective of the donor’s gender.56 Women actively celebrate the generosity of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa,57 for example, while men actively celebrate the generosity of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. In addition, women who have gone through menopause (and therefore have no mating incentive) are as generous as any other demographic, and perhaps even more so. They volunteer, donate money, and run charitable foundations—even when they’re happily married with no chance of having further children. It’s also telling that people advertise their philanthropic activities on resumes and in capsule biographies, and that colleges ask students about volunteer work during the admissions process. Politicians also trumpet their generosity when running for office. (In fact, generosity is a prized attribute of leaders around the world.58) In other words, charity serves to impress not just potential mates, but also social and political gatekeepers.