Donors who have taken the Giving What We Can (GWWC) pledge to donate at least 10% of their income to charity generally are better at identifying need and detecting traits of those in trouble.

According to a study from GWWC, a charity based in England and Wales, pledgers were better at identifying fearful faces, were more morally expansive and higher in actively open-minded thinking, need for cognition and two subscales of utilitarianism and, tentatively, lower in social dominance orientation. They were lower in maximizing tendency.  

Some 9,137 people from 104 countries have signed on to donate 10% of their income to charities.

The study explores factors that are unique in those who have chosen to take the GWWC pledge. The data offer new insights into understanding the motivations and characteristics of unusual, or extraordinary, altruists: those who are willing to engage in altruistic actions that go far beyond the behavior of a typical population, according to authors of the study “Who gives? Characteristics of those who have taken the Giving What We Can pledge.”

Understanding altruistic motivations has long been a central topic of interest in the social sciences. According to the authors, in addition to normal moral motivation, there has been a subset of research focusing on those who are unusually altruistically motivated (sometimes called moral exemplars, or extraordinary or exceptional altruists). That is, those whose altruistic acts go far beyond what is expected of the typical population.

These altruists offer a challenge for evolutionary accounts of altruistic motivation: that we are motivated to help others if there is a potential for future benefit of our own (reciprocal altruism; Trivers, 1971), or to facilitate the continuation of our genes (kin altruism; Dawkins, 1979), according to the authors. In the case of these exceptional altruists, researchers found examples of those who are offering help for those to whom they have no close social connections and in some cases for those who they will never meet or even know the identity.

Researchers examined a range of personality and cognitive traits that might differ in GWWC pledgers as compared to the typical population. The researchers tested and examined 10 areas: Identifying faces; Moral expansiveness; Empathy/compassion; Social dominance orientation; Maximizing tendency; Actively open-minded thinking; Need for cognition; Impartial beneficence; and, Instrumental harm.

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Source From Non Profit Times