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Who Gives? The Roles of Empathy and Impulsiveness

James Andreoni A, Ann‐Kathrin Koessler, Marta Serra-García

The MIT Press eBooks, 2018

10 citations

Abstract

We investigate the impact of empathy and impulsiveness on charitable giving using a real donation experiment. We confirm that greater empathy predicts greater charitable giving. Contrary to recent literature, however, we find a significant negative relationship between impulsiveness and donation behavior. Specifically, when financial resources are scarce, donations are more often made by decisionmakers who are able to suppress an intuitively egoistic response.

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