The Economist
Question: what motivates people to give money to charities or donate blood, acts which are costly to the doer and primarily benefit others.
Answer: people do good in part because it makes them look good to those whose opinions they care about. Economists call this image motivation. Dan Ariely, Anat Bracha & Stephan Meier tested the importance of image motivation. if people do good to look good, introducing monetary or other rewards into the mix might be counterproductive (An observer who sees someone getting paid for donating blood, for example, would find it hard to differentiate between the donor’s intrinsic goodness and his greed).
Conclusion (for charities): Suppose, for example, that rewards were used to encourage people to support a certain cause with a minimum donation. If that cause then publicised those who were generous well beyond the minimum required of them, it would show that they were not just "in it for the money".
Weird (research)parallel: how to draw out more participation to human experiments by exploiting image motivation
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