Emotions and Giving

Charitable giving by individuals is usually driven by emotion, not logic. Is this problematic? Yes and no. I recently read an article in the Health Communication journal comparing a campaign, Malaria No More, and the response to the earthquake in Haiti. This article caused me to think more about this issue, emotional driven giving. As a person who studies communication, I am always fascinated by what sort of messages elicit particular responses.

The malaria campaign, focused on providing mosquito nets to those in areas at high risk for malaria, was overall a success. They had used celebrities, like Ashton Kutcher, and a variety of social media platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. The celebrities involved were provided with messages to send out or tweet that would share information and statistics that were relevant to the campaign. Most aid sent for Haiti, on the other hand, was prompted by witnessing disaster footage and listening to the stories of victims on television. Both situations provided easy methods of giving: either through clicking an icon on twitter or sending a text message that would be added to the person’s cell phone bill.

What health communication scholars Turner and Robinson (2014) attribute the difference in individual’s charitable giving to is a “vicarious emotional experience.” People are more likely to give to a cause where they can see those affected telling their stories than they are when they see numbers. Perhaps giving the celebrities in the Malaria No More campaign prewritten tweets kept them on target in terms of information accuracy, but it did not allow for their expression about their emotional response to the issue. Using media platforms like Twitter and making giving easy through smartphone use is not enough to make a campaign effective. An emotional connection is needed.

So, I ask again, is this fact problematic? Yes, in the sense that giving will not necessarily be the result of true need, but pulled toward causes for which those with authority, money, or influence feel deeply. This can also cause instability in giving (when the emotional appeal is gone, the money goes too).

So how can this be a good thing? I would say that knowing emotions drive giving is a powerful thing in and of itself. If those at the top or setting the agenda (which I will get to in a later blog) are capable of rational selection of campaign goals, then emotional appeals can be used to further that campaign. Yes, there are ethical debates about the use of emotional appeals in persuasion, but I will not discuss that here. What I find most promising is that hearing the individuals affected by whatever disease or catastrophe is being targeted has a great impact. This means that it is in the campaign’s best interest to project the voices of those affected to those giving. I think encouraging this idea could have a larger effect on the global health scene than simply increasing numbers of charitable giving for individual campaigns. Provided that the stories projected are truly the ones these individuals wish to tell, it could spark a conversation about what type of things are really needed worldwide in terms of health.

Turner, J. W., & Robinson, J. D. (2014). Malaria No More: Nothing but Nets.Health communication, (ahead-of-print), 1-2.

Malaria No More's website: http://www.malarianomore.org/