Marketers distinguish between three types of media: paid (e.g., advertising), owned (e.g., company website), and earned (e.g., publicity). The effects of paid media on sales have been extensively covered in the marketing literature. The effects of earned media, however, have received limited...

We explore the signal value of emotion and reason in human cooperation. Across four experiments utilizing dyadic prisoner dilemma games, we establish three central results. First, individuals believe that a reliance on emotion signals that one will cooperate more so than a reliance on reason....

Although much research finds that ldquo;birds of a feather flock together,rdquo; the present research suggests that opposites tend to attract when it comes to certain spending tendencies. That is, ldquo;tightwads,rdquo; who generally spend less than they would ideally like to spend, and...

Charity could do the most good if every dollar donated went to causes that produced the greatest welfare gains. In line with this proposition, the “Effective Altruism” movement seeks to provide individuals with information regarding the effectiveness of charities in hopes that they will...

Advertisements for charities often display photographs of the people they help to evoke the kind of sympathy that engenders giving. This article examines how the expression of emotion on a victim’s face affects both sympathy and giving. Building on theories of emotional contagion and sympathy,...

People believe that they are better than others on easy tasks and worse than others on difficult tasks. Previous attempts to explain these better-than-average and worse-than-average effects have invoked bias and motivation as causes. This paper develops a more parsimonious account, the...

Why do different people give to different causes? We argue that the sympathy inherent to a close relationship with a victim extends to other victims, leading benefactors to prefer charities that help those suffering from the misfortunes that have affected their friends and loved ones. Study 1, a...