Thinking About Giving, Not Receiving, Motivates People
to Help Others
A research says that Always think about giving, not about
receiving it motivates people to help others. We're often told to 'count our
blessings' and be grateful for what we have. And research shows that doing so
makes us happier. But will it actually change our behavior towards others?
A new study published in Psychological
Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests
that thinking about what we've given, rather than what we've received, may lead
us to be more helpful toward others.
Researchers Adam Grant of The
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Jane Dutton of The Ross
School of Business at the University of Michigan wanted to understand how
reflection, in the form of expressive writing, might influence prosocial
behavior. They observed that when we reflect on what we've received from
another person, we might feel an obligation to help that person, but the
motivation to help doesn't necessarily extend to other people. And reflecting
on what we've received from others may even cause us to feel dependent and indebted.
The researchers wondered whether
thinking about times when we have given to others might be more effective in
promoting helping. They hypothesized that reflecting on giving could lead a
person to see herself as a benefactor, strengthening her identity as a caring,
helpful individual and motivating her to take action to benefit others.
In their first experiment, the
researchers studied fundraisers whose job was to solicit alumni donations to
support various programs at a university. The researchers randomly split the
fundraisers into two groups: one group wrote journal entries about recent
experiences of feeling grateful for receiving a benefit and the other group
wrote journal entries about recent experiences in which they made a
contribution that enabled other people to feel grateful.
Grant and Dutton then measured how
many calls each fundraiser made per hour in the two weeks before and the two
weeks after the week that they spent journaling. Because the fundraisers were
paid a fixed hourly rate, with no fundraising goals or incentives, the number
of calls they made reflected voluntary effort to help raise funds for the
university.
As the researchers hypothesized, the
fundraisers who wrote about giving for just two or three days increased their
hourly calls by more than 29% in the following two weeks. The fundraisers who
wrote about receiving, however, showed no change in the number hourly calls
made.
In a second experiment, the
researchers randomly assigned college students to one of three groups, requiring
them to list three ways they had recently given help, list three ways they had
recently received help, or list three different foods they had eaten in the
last week.
When the participants came to the
university's behavioral lab a few weeks later to pick up their payment for
participating in the study, they were given a form describing the March 11,
2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. On the form, the participants were asked
whether they would like to donate any portion of their $5 payment to an earthquake
relief fund.
Overall, 26% of the participants
donated some amount of money. Similar to the results of the first experiment,
participants who reflected on giving were significantly more likely to donate
(46.15%) than those in either the beneficiary (21.43%) or control condition
(13.33%).
Grant and Dutton believe that the
findings from these two experiments have important real-world implications.
"Helping, giving, volunteering,
and other actions undertaken to benefit others play a critical role in protecting
health, promoting education, fighting poverty and hunger, and providing
disaster relief," the researchers write.
This new research suggests that
self-reflection about giving can be a powerful tool for motivating helping and
volunteering behaviors that benefit individuals and communities. When we
reflect on positive experiences, it may be worthwhile to think about what we've
given to others -- not only what we've received.
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