Donations of time are seen as more virtuous than donations of money, despite people’s (correct) belief that money-donations help more people; this is due to the perception that time-donors are more emotionally invested

Moral signaling through donations of money and time. Samuel G.B. Johnson, Seo Young Park. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Volume 165, July 2021, Pages 183-196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2021.05.004

Highlights

• Donations of time are seen as more virtuous than donations of money.

• This occurs despite people’s (correct) belief that money-donations help more people.

• The effect is driven by the perception that time-donors are more emotionally invested.

• These judgments influence interpersonal attraction and donor behavior.

• The findings support reputation-signaling accounts of prosocial behavior.

Abstract

Prosocial acts typically take the form of time- or money-donations. Do third-parties differ in how they evaluate these different kinds of donations? Here, we show that people view time-donations as more morally praiseworthy and more diagnostic of moral character than money-donations, even when the resource investment is comparable. This moral preference occurs because people perceive time-donations as signaling greater emotional investment in the cause and therefore better moral character; this occurs despite the (correct) belief that time-donations are typically less effective than money-donations (Study 1). This effect in turn is explained by two mechanisms: People believe that time-donations are costlier even when their objective costs are equated, which happens because people rely on a lay theory associating time with the self (Study 2). The more signaling power of time-donations has downstream implications for interpersonal attractiveness in a dating context (Study 3A), employment decisions (Study 3B), and donor decision-making (Study 3). Moreover, donors who are prompted with an affiliation rather (versus dominance) goal are likelier to favor time-donations (Study 4). However, reframing money-donations in terms of time (e.g., donating a week’s salary) reduced and even reversed these effects (Study 5). These results support theories of prosociality that place reputation-signaling as a key motivator of moral behavior. We discuss implications for the charity market and for social movements, such as effective altruism, that seek to maximize the social benefit of altruistic acts.

Keywords: Prosocial behaviorAltruismMoral psychologyReputation signalingCharitable giving