Designs that Make it Easy to be Generous
Saturday, March 26th, 2011
Products and services that make it easy to give money in support of important causes (prosocial spending) make us feel good. I can give money to fight cancer in children when I make a purchase at the grocery store or send a text to help citizens in Japan cope with one of the biggest natural disasters of all time.
This is good cognitive design- adding specific features and functions to existing products to generate a specific mental state. Prosocial spending engages the psychology of generosity, it makes us happy and gives us well being. But how much lift do we get? How universal is the impulse to be generous?
A recent working paper from Harvard Business School found that the emotional benefits of generosity are significant and universal or occur across cultures. They looked at survey data from a 136 countries and did a causal study in two countries to conclude:
“In contrast to traditional economic thought—which places self-interest as the guiding principle of human motivation—our findings suggest that the reward experienced from helping others may be deeply ingrained in human nature, emerging in diverse cultural and economic contexts.”
This is a strong signal to cognitive designers. Enabling opportunities for prosocial spending – or other forms of generosity- will generate significant psychological impact for most groups.
