| Summary: | How do donors
reason and justify their choices when faced with dilemmas in a charitable
context? In two studies, Swedish students were confronted with helping dilemmas
based on the identifiable victim effect, the proportion dominance effect and
the ingroup effect. Each dilemma consisted of two comparable charity projects
and participants were asked to choose one project over the other. They were
then asked to provide justifications of their choice by stating the relative
importance of different types of reasons. When faced with an identified victim
dilemma, participants did not choose the project including an identified victim
more often than the project framed statistically, but those who did emphasized
emotional reasons (e.g., “Because I had more empathic feelings”), but not any
other reasons, more than those choosing the statistical project. When faced
with a Proportion dominance dilemma, participants more often chose the project
with a high rescue proportion (e.g., you can save 100% out of 30) than the
project with a low rescue proportion (e.g., you can save 4% out of 800), and
those who did emphasized efficacy reasons (e.g., “Because my money can make a
greater difference there”), but no other reasons, more than those favoring the
low recue proportion project. Finally, when faced with an Ingroup dilemma,
participants more often chose the project that could help ingroup-victims over
the project that could help outgroup victims, and those who did emphasized
responsibility reasons (e.g., “Because I have a greater obligation”), but no
other reasons, more than those favoring outgroup projects. These results are
consistent with and extend previous findings about how different helping
effects are related to different psychological processes.
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