The Life You Can Save: Affective and Deliberative Processes Motivating Charitable Decisions

地球上居住着60多亿人。其中约有10亿人享有人类历史上前所未有的高水平生活，而另外10亿人生活在极端贫困中，面临饥饿、疾病、自然灾害和人为恶意的巨大风险。这项研究探讨了是什么促使富裕国家的人们向有需要的人捐款和提供人道主义援助。这项研究建立在心理学理论的基础上，测试了注意力、想象、信任、情绪、情感和不同需求描述的影响。项目团队还研究了当一个人帮助另一个需要帮助的人时产生的温暖的感觉的重要性和决定因素。尽管在过去的20年里有很多关于慈善捐赠和慈善事业的研究，但仍然存在许多悬而未决的问题。该项目采用实验室实验、在线调查和实地研究来解决以下问题：*暖光的心理本质是什么？什么时候经历过？多长时间?这种经历的持续时间是多长？它如何影响后来的捐赠决定？没有实际的给予行为，是否也能产生温暖的感觉？*什么因素通过温暖的光芒调节捐赠，既激励又抑制捐赠？需要者的数量如何影响暖光？当我们意识到我们没有帮助的人时，我们是否就不去帮助那些我们可以帮助的人了？*如何对暖光的产生进行建模，以纳入许多因果变量之间复杂而动态的相互作用？这些学者之前在这一领域的研究已经影响了记者和人道主义援助组织采取的方法，以激励人们及其政府做更多的事情来帮助他人。这项新的研究继续为那些致力于拯救生命和提高世界上最贫困人口福祉的人提供信息。

There are more than 6 billion people inhabiting Planet Earth. About one billion of these enjoy a high standard of living unprecedented in human history, while another billion live in extreme poverty, subject to great risk from hunger, disease, natural disasters, and human malevolence. This research explores what motivates those in the wealthy world to contribute money and humanitarian aid to those in need. This research builds on psychological theory to test the effects of attention, imagery, trust, moods, emotions, and varying descriptions of the need. The project team also examines the importance and determiners of the warm glow of good feeling that occurs when one helps another in need. Although there have been many studies of charitable giving and philanthropy during the past 20 years, many open questions remain. This project employs laboratory experiments, online surveys, and field studies to address questions such as the following:* What is the psychological nature of warm glow: What is the experience? When is it experienced? How often? What is the duration of the experience and how does it influence subsequent decisions about donating? Can warm glow feelings be induced without the actual act of giving?* What factors mediate giving through warm glow, both to motivate and demotivate giving? How does the number of people in need influence warm glow? Are we deterred from aiding those people we can help by becoming aware of others we are not helping?* How might warm glow giving be modeled to incorporate the complex and dynamic interactions among many causal variables?Previous research by these scholars in this area has already influenced the approaches that journalists and humanitarian aid organizations have taken to motivate people and their governments to do more to help others. The new research continues to inform those who are working to save lives and enhance the well being of the world's neediest people.