Donating Behavior and Percieved Emotional Pleasure
I am very excited to announce that I have recieved IRB approval to conduct a study that I pioneered. The following is an exerpt of my IRB proposal with an explication of the study. Look out for updates!
Subjects
The proposed research project will involve self-selected subjects amongst bystanders near the arbor by the Davidson Library. Subjects in this subject pool will be predominately UCSB undergraduates (aged 18-25), with the possibility of a very small number of older participants. Researchers expect up to 200 subjects from this population. They are expected to have English as their dominant language. No physical hardships, exercise, or stress will be required of any of these subjects.
Physiological Interventions
The proposed studies do not include any physiological intervention or exercise. Participation in the studies will therefore pose no additional risk to the subjects. Subjects are not expected to have any more proclivity towards pregnancy, poor health, or any other special condition than the population at large.
Location
All experiments involving the subject pool will be administered outside the Davidson Library near the arbor.
Procedures
People differ in the perceived pleasure when engaging in acts of altruism based on the discretion of their name. Some people believe that anonymous acts of altruism yield more pleasure than disclosed acts of altruism. The current study aims to understand the effect of name disclosure on perceived pleasure in the context of an altruistic act.
While the confederate/experimenter is sitting in the arbor by the “Save a child’s Heart” charity display (in an approachable but relatively quiet manner), participants will self volunteer by approaching the table where they will have the opportunity to take a pledge to donate money to a cause. In return, the participant will receive an “I donated” paper cutout on which they will write their name and post on the display board beside the table.
Each potential participant will be informed by the confederate about the charity and how they can donate.
“Pledge to donate 1$ to save a child’s heart? You get to write your name on a heart and post it up on our display! Save a child’s heart is an non profit organization that provides urgent pediatric heart surgery and follow up care for indigent children from developing countries regardless of race sex color financial status, Every 29 hours a desperately ill child from a developing country is saved in the pediatric cardiac surgical unit of the Save a Child's Heart.
Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the two conditions
Anonymous condition:
In this condition, participants who pledge to donate to the cause will receive an “I pledged” paper cutout and writes his/her name on it to be put on the display beside the table. The display board will feature many paper-cutouts with donator’s names on them. After the participant has filled their name on the cut-out to post, the will be told by the experimenter that there is no more tape to post the cut-out and given the option to keep the cutout. This way the participants has “donated anonymously”.
Display condition:
In the display condition the participant will post their name on the poster board and told that it would be up for everyone to see all week.
Once the participants have completed pledging and posting (or keeping their cut-out), a confederate will approach the participant with a paper survey to measure their current level of pleasure. This survey will be a single question asking to rate their level of pleasure at that moment. This will later be compared between the two groups to see if there is a stronger correlation between pleasure/anonymous donating versus pleasure/acknowledged donating. In the event a participant does not want to fill out the survey they will be immediately debriefed. After the survey, participants will be told that they had just participated in a study. They will then be told the true nature of the study with a debriefing form assuring them that the charity involved is indeed a real charity, they have the right to withdraw their data from the study, and given the opportunity to ask any questions.
We believe that people will experience a greater increase in perceived pleasure when their name is displayed for donating than donating anonymously.