Department of Psychology, University of Zurich.
Psychol Aging. 2021 Feb;36(1):96-107. doi: 10.1037/pag0000548.
Empirical evidence suggests that self-reported prosociality and donations increase with age. The majority of this research was conducted using monetary donations as outcome measures. However, on average older adults hold a significant advantage in financial and material assets compared to younger adults, effectively lowering the subjective cost of small monetary donations. Are older adults also more prosocial when donating a nonmonetary resource that is of equal or even higher value for them compared to younger age groups? A first study (N = 160, 20-74 years) combined data from self-report measures, affective responses, and hypothetical donation decisions to compute a single prosociality factor. Conceptually replicating findings from Hubbard, Harbaugh, Srivastava, Degras, and Mayr (2016) on monetary donations, results suggest that nonmonetary prosociality also increases with age. However, these differences depended on the domain of the donation. Data from two further behavioral studies (Study 2: N = 156, 18-89 years; Study 3: N = 342, 19-88 years) that were analyzed using Bayesian statistics provided evidence that older adults are not more prosocial than younger and middle-aged adults when donating a small amount of their time (in service of a donation to charity). In summary, the three studies suggest that older adults are not consistently more likely to behave prosocially than younger or middle-aged adults in nonmonetary domains. These findings point to the importance of moving research on prosociality and aging beyond financial donations and further explore the role of resources and perceived costs of prosociality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
实证证据表明，自我报告的亲社会行为和捐赠随着年龄的增长而增加。这项研究的大部分是用货币捐赠作为结果测量进行的。然而，与年轻人相比，老年人平均拥有更多的金融和物质资产，这有效地降低了小额货币捐赠的主观成本。当捐赠对他们来说具有同等甚至更高价值的非货币资源时，老年人是否也更具亲社会性？第一项研究（N=160，20-74 岁）结合了自我报告、情感反应和假设捐赠决策的数据，计算出一个单一的亲社会因素。概念上复制了 Hubbard、Harbaugh、Srivastava、Degras 和 Mayr（2016 年）关于货币捐赠的发现，结果表明，非货币亲社会性也随着年龄的增长而增加。然而，这些差异取决于捐赠的领域。来自另外两项行为研究（研究 2：N=156，18-89 岁；研究 3：N=342，19-88 岁）的数据，使用贝叶斯统计进行了分析，提供了证据表明，当老年人捐赠少量时间（用于慈善捐赠）时，他们并不比年轻人和中年人更具亲社会性。综上所述，这三项研究表明，在非货币领域，老年人并不总是比年轻人或中年人更有可能表现出亲社会行为。这些发现表明，超越金融捐赠进一步研究亲社会性和老龄化的资源和感知成本的重要性。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2021 APA，保留所有权利）。
