Effects of Motivation for Prosocial Spending on Subsequent Positive Affect

The present research compared the effects of empathy, moral elevation and a control condition as motivations for charitable donations on subsequent feelings of positive affect. Empathy and moral elevation have strong emotional aspects that provide the impetus for prosocial behavior. Empathy is defined as an other-oriented and congruent affective reaction that is concerned with the perceived well-being of another person (Batson, Ahmad, Lishner, 2009), while moral elevation is the warm, uplifting feeling people experience after witnessing moral beauty (Haidt, 2000). Empathy often induces negative feelings from seeing others in distress, while moral elevation often induces positive emotions. Thus, the initial difference in affective valence may have different effects on the positive affect experienced after acting prosocially. Furthermore, a number of personal characteristics are known to influence positive affect after prosocial behavior, such as personal values, internalized prosocial motivation and the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, namely autonomy, relatedness and competence. Therefore, the present study compared the effects of empathy and moral elevation, as well as a control condition, on individuals’ donations to charity and their subsequent positive affect while controlling for personal characteristics. Participants were 249 students from an introductory psychology class at the University of Toronto. The results suggested that participants in both the empathy and moral elevation conditions experienced significant decreases in positive affect following the induction of motivations, but that donating only helped restore positive affect to baseline measures in the moral elevation condition. Donating to charity was unable to restore participants to baseline measures in the empathy condition. The results also indicated that needs for competence and relatedness, internalized prosocial motivation and emotion regulation positively predicted positive affect after donation, while prosocial and pro-self values both negatively predicted positive affect after donation. As well, the association between affective empathy and positive affect after donating was negative for participants in the empathy condition, but positive for participants in the moral elevation condition. Similar differences by condition were found for internalized prosocial motivation and positive affect after donating. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.Ph.D