TY - JOUR
T1 - How far is the suffering? The role of psychological distance and victims’ identifiability in donation decisions
AU - Kogut, Tehila
AU - Ritov, Ilana
AU - Rubaltelli, Enrico
AU - Liberman, Nira
N1 - Funding Information: This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), grant 1068/15. Copyright: © 2018. The authors license this article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. ∗Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Education & Decision Making and Economic Psychology Center, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel, 84105. E-mail: [email protected]. †Hebrew University of Jerusalem. ‡University of Padova §Tel-Aviv University Publisher Copyright: © 2018, Society for Judgment and Decision making. All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/9/1
Y1 - 2018/9/1
N2 - We are regularly told about people at various locations around the globe, both near and far, who are in distress or in dire need. In the present research, we examined how the prospective donor’s psychological distance from a given victim may interact with the victim’s identification to determine the donor’s willingness to accede to requests for donations to help the victim in question. In three studies, we measured willingness to donate (Studies 1 & 2) and actual donations (Study 3) to identified or unidentified victims, while measuring (Study 1) or manipulating (Studies 2 & 3) the psychological distance between prospective donors and the recipients. Results indicate that increasing the psychological distance between prospective donors and victims decreases willingness to help — but only when the victims are unidentified, not when they are identified. This suggests that victim’s identification mitigates the effect of distance on donor’s willingness to help.
AB - We are regularly told about people at various locations around the globe, both near and far, who are in distress or in dire need. In the present research, we examined how the prospective donor’s psychological distance from a given victim may interact with the victim’s identification to determine the donor’s willingness to accede to requests for donations to help the victim in question. In three studies, we measured willingness to donate (Studies 1 & 2) and actual donations (Study 3) to identified or unidentified victims, while measuring (Study 1) or manipulating (Studies 2 & 3) the psychological distance between prospective donors and the recipients. Results indicate that increasing the psychological distance between prospective donors and victims decreases willingness to help — but only when the victims are unidentified, not when they are identified. This suggests that victim’s identification mitigates the effect of distance on donor’s willingness to help.
KW - Distance
KW - Donation decisions
KW - Identifiable victim effect
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85054311931&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1930297500008731
DO - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1930297500008731
M3 - Article
SN - 1930-2975
VL - 13
SP - 458
EP - 466
JO - Judgment and Decision Making
JF - Judgment and Decision Making
IS - 5
ER -