Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This study explored the influence of various socio-affective factors on charitable giving, using an online task in which participants could choose to exert time and effort that was translated into monetary donations. Participants had the option of making Public Donations, Anonymous Donations, or No Donations. Moreover, some participants were given Social Information (SI) regarding the percentage of Public vs. Anonymous donations obtained in a pilot study. We found that the proportion of Public Donations increased with greater scores on the Narcissistic Entitlement & Exploitativeness scale (NPI EE), but only in the SI group. Conversely, the proportion of Anonymous Donations decreased with greater NPI EE scores, in the No Social Information group (NSI). In the absence of Social Information, Simulated Compassion scores (SCS), indicative of social approval seeking, decreased the proportion of No Donation decisions as well as the average amount donated. Finally, Social Information modulated the proportion of Public donations.