January 1, 2019

  • Rich people give MORE to charity when they feel powerful

    wealth 1

    Appealing to rich people's desire to control events is a better tactic to get them to donate to charity, rather than their community spirit.  That's the finding of a psychological study building on previous research which found that the wealthy value control more than people on lower incomes.  Donations from high earners were 1.5 times larger when researchers tailored the wording of letters requesting financial support to play on this desire.

    Experts from Harvard University wrote to 12,000 alumni of an Ivy League business school - who were earning $100,000 per year or more - asking them to donate to the school.  Two sets of letters were sent out – one saying the ‘community’ needed to take action, while the other called on individual action.

    The letters were phrased respectively as 'Sometimes, one person needs to come forward and take individual action' or 'Sometimes, one community needs to come forward and support a common goal.'

    Wealth 2

    Respondents to the second letter gave $432 on average compared to the $270 average from the first group, around $162 or 1.5 times more.

    Speaking to New Scientist Ashley Whillans, who led the research, said of the findings: 'We think that giving high-income earners a sense of control makes them want to give more.  Charities often use messages that highlight how positive the action is, like, "it’s so important to help the environment", but they may benefit from tailoring their messages to people’s self-interested motivations instead.'

    A recent Harvard study found that no matter how much money you have you are never happy with the amount.

    Researchers at Harvard Business School quizzed 2,000 millionaires for the paper, which is considered to be the first of its kind to focus solely on this level of wealth.

    One quarter of millionaires worth $1.5 million said they'd need eleven times more money to be perfectly happy, while one quarter said they would need six times as much.

    Another quarter said they would need twice as much money to finally be happy.

    Interestingly, this 'did not differ by wealth' and the perceived need that more money equates to more happiness was expressed even by those with a net worth of more than $7.6 million.

    The full findings of the latest study were published in the journal PLoS One.

    Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk