Yesterday on the radio I heard that scientists from Harvard and UC San Diego showed that giving is infectious. In the game they arranged, if you were the only giver, you lost while everyone else gained a little. But if everyone gave, everyone gained a lot. Outcome of the study? When one person was generous, in the subsequent rounds everyone else became more generous, too.
Great news!
Then later in the day I read the except from Superfreakonomics describing a twist on the classic economic field game, Dictator (h/t Jennifer Gresham). In the original game, a participant could give part of his cash or nothing at all, with no consequences either way, end of experiment. And repeatedly, most folks shared at least something. This was in line with people behaving altruistically. But when researcher John List also added the choice of stealing to the previous choices of giving or doing nothing, altruistic behavior plummeted.
Oops!
I heart the scientific method as much as the next analytical geek. But philanthropy is a complex and messy beast. One study can show one conclusion, and another experiment can show something entirely opposite. To consider any research about it, we have to keep in mind two things:
1. Data was derived from a very specific, very artificial scenario. Changing details of that scenario changes the outcome.
(This is the very point of the second study, that the theory of people being altruistic was wrong because it was based not on the “real world” but on a lab experiment. But then, of course, they presume List’s theories are correct based on… a lab experiment.)
2. The data is analyzed through the framework of the particular academic.
Spuerfreakonomics’s Levitt is an economist; he views the world through a lens of incentives and only conceptualizes of Stuff as Capital, never Stuff as Gifts (he makes the very case that the example I frequently use for what is hands-down a Gift, a kidney, should be sold as Capital).
You’re not going to find a complete answer for why people give by asking one academic. If you ask a professor of economics, you will get an answer through the framework of cost/benefit and incentives. If you ask a professor of evolutionary biology, you’ll get an answer about altruism as a tool for promoting the species. A neurobiologist will talk about giving through the framework of the brain. A religion professor will say giving is part of our relationship to the sacred. An ethics professor will say giving is necessary for a moral society. And an art professor will just point to a piece of art-making and say: There. That’s all you need to know.
Everyone approaches giving through their particular framework. Everyone is correct, in their narrow way, but the full picture can’t be represented through one field.
Ok.
That said:
These studies can be useful when they are considered together, the same way that we get the full picture of the elephant from the descriptions of each of the blind men. (Remembering, of course, that these that data-driven studies occur only in the social and “hard” science fields, not in the fields of the humanities or the arts. Looking at academic studies will give you only two of the four main approaches toward giving).
So see the special Bonus! compilation post of academic studies that have implications for giving. If you are aware of more studies, please let me know and I’ll add ‘em.
