May 2022 International SAT Reading Test (Q 11-20)

Why anyone is ever selfless is a mystery that has
fascinated, not to mention frustrated, scientists since
Charles Darwin, who considered it a major problem
for his theory of natural selection. If every creature
⁵ on earth was in competition with every other, then
how to explain bees sacrificing themselves for the
good of the hive, or men and women running into
burning buildings to save the lives of strangers?
These questions have led researchers to posit that
¹⁰ helping others, even when it costs us dearly, is simply
part of being successful social animals: Despite our
imperative to compete, we ultimately find it pays off
to be generous.

Of course, it's one thing to explain why people in
¹⁵ general are inclined to help others, and another to
examine how it plays out in the mind of an
individual person. Studying charitable donation has
been a valuable window into that process for
researchers, because it allows them to quantify the
²⁰ amount of good a person is doing, and how much he
or she is giving up.

One dominant strain of thought among charity
researchers is that our donations aren't chiefly driven
by concern for others, or a principled sense of
²⁵ altruism—that instead, it’s largely a way for us to
indulge the desire to feel virtuous and happy about
our role in the world. This theory was formalized in
1989 by behavioral economist James Andreoni, who
described the rush of self satisfaction and sense of
³⁰ purpose one experiences after committing support to
a worthy cause as a "warm glow." The reason we give
money, Andreoni wrote, is that it makes us feel
good—regardless of how much it benefits the people
we’re ostensibly trying to help.

³⁵ Another prominent theory to emerge from the
research is that people give because of social
pressure. We want to avoid appearing selfish or
coldhearted, especially in front of people who are
suffering or people whose opinions we care about.
⁴⁰ We might feel this type of pressure when someone at
the office asks if we’d like to participate in the
companywide campaign for a particular charity.

Those aren’t the reasons we like to think of
ourselves as donating, but experimental research on
⁴⁵ charity tends to support the notion that donating and
thinking occupy separate realms. Jonathan Baron, a
psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, asked a
group of participants which charity they’d rather
give to: one that achieved its goals so efficiently that
⁵⁰ it could spend 20 percent of its money on
advertising, or one that required more money to do
the same amount of good, and thus spent less on
promotion. Though the first charity was technically
more efficient, people tended to favor the latter:

⁵⁵ What mattered to them was seeing more of their own
money at work, Baron concluded, rather than the
amount of good it did.

This conclusion is bolstered by the findings of
John List, an economist at the University of Chicago, so
⁶⁰ who tested the effectiveness of so-called matching
programs, in which a major supporter agrees to
match the contributions of individual donors.
List expected to find that matching Programs enticed
people to give, by creating the (correct) impression
⁶⁵ that their money would go further. But List's results
were curious: While charities that offered a matching
program did inspire more people to give than
charities that didn't, he was surprised to find that a
higher matching ratio didn’t lead to larger donations.
⁷⁰ People whose donations would be quadrupled—a
huge increase in the power of their gift—didn't
donate any more money than people whose
donations would simply be doubled. ’’People get
utility or satisfaction out of giving to a good cause.
⁷⁵ And they do not care how much public good is
provided," List said.