Warren P E, Walker I
Department of Psychology, Murdoch University, Western Australia.
Br J Soc Psychol. 1991 Dec;30 ( Pt 4):325-37. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8309.1991.tb00949.x.
Charity organizations often use mailed requests to solicit donations from the public. This is not an efficient way to raise large amounts of money. The challenge addressed in this study was to use social psychology's knowledge of helping processes to make mailed requests more effective. Two constructs were identified as possibly useful: empathy and perceived effectiveness of helping. These were manipulated in a field experiment in a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design (two levels of empathy, two of need extent, and two of need persistence--the last two factors operationalized perceived effectiveness). Letter soliciting donations to a well-known charity were mailed to a random sample of 2648 people in Perth, Western Australia. Manipulations of the three variables were embedded in the letters. The two effectiveness manipulations produced significant main effects, whereas the empathy manipulation was ineffective. We argue that social psychology's knowledge of helping processes is too confined to narrow, theoretical, laboratory-based phenomena to be directly and immediately applicable to the practices of charities.
慈善组织经常通过邮寄请求来向公众募捐。这并不是筹集大量资金的有效方式。本研究要解决的挑战是利用社会心理学中关于助人过程的知识，使邮寄请求更有效。确定了两个可能有用的概念：同理心和助人的感知有效性。在一项2×2×2析因设计的现场实验中对它们进行了操纵（同理心两个水平、需求程度两个水平、需求持续性两个水平——后两个因素体现感知有效性）。向澳大利亚西部珀斯的2648人随机样本邮寄了给一家知名慈善机构的募捐信。三个变量的操纵嵌入在信件中。两个有效性操纵产生了显著的主效应，而同理心操纵则无效。我们认为，社会心理学中关于助人过程的知识过于局限于狭隘的、基于理论的实验室现象，无法直接且立即应用于慈善机构的实践。
