Co-author Dr Nichola
Raihani (UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment), said: “We looked at why people behave
generously in real-world situations, even when there is no obvious benefit to
them in doing so. We found a remarkably strong response with men competing to
advertise generosity to attractive women, but didn’t see women reacting in a
similar way, showing competitive helping is more a male than female trait.”
The study, published today in Current Biology and funded by the Royal Society, found that people
on average give about £10 more after seeing others’ large donations. When the
large donations are made by men to attractive female fundraisers, subsequent donations
from other men increase by a further £28 on average.
The researchers reviewed 2,561 fundraising pages from the
2014 London marathon and found 668 that met the study criteria. Each needed to
include an image of the fundraiser whose gender was identified and
attractiveness verified independently. The pages also had to feature large
donations from people who could also be assigned a gender to measure the
responses of subsequent donors. A large donation was defined as double the mean
donation on the page and at least £50; it was typically around £100.
For each fundraising page, the researchers calculated the
average donation using up to 10 donations before a large sum was given. The
responses of up to 15 donors following the large donation were then studied in
12 categories defined by the gender and attractiveness of the fundraiser, and
the gender of the person who made the large donation.
Each fundraising page was shown to four independent
reviewers who rated how attractive they found the fundraiser on a scale of 0-10
with 10 being ‘extremely attractive’. For both men and women, fundraisers who
were smiling were perceived to be more attractive than those who weren’t and
received more donations.
Co-author Professor Sarah Smith (University of
Bristol), said: “Fundraising pages provide a fascinating real-life laboratory
for looking at charity donations. Previously, we saw how donors responded to
how much other people had given. Now we see that the response depends – albeit
sub-consciously – on the fundraiser’s attractiveness. On a practical level,
there are implications for how fundraisers can raise more money for charities. To
London marathon fundraisers, I would say get your generous friends to donate
early and make sure you put a good picture up, preferably one in which you are
smiling!”
Dr Raihani, added: “It’s fascinating that evolutionary
biology can offer insights into human behaviour even in the modern world.
People are really generous and their reasons for giving to charity are
generally not self-serving but it doesn’t preclude their motives from having
evolved to benefit them in some way. Take eating for example, our primary drive
is to dispel the feeling of hunger, which is pleasurable, but the evolutionary
purpose is to make sure we don’t starve and die. Generous behaviours can be seen in a similar
way - the motivation for performing them doesn’t have to be the same as the
evolutionary function.”
- See more at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0415/160415_fundraising#sthash.IwHJmCk1.dpuf