How in Difnferences Emotional Appeals Affects Charitable Behaviors

Junseo Lee
Seoul International School

Abstract

Both altruism and emotional experiences are commonly discussed together in the field of social
psychology. Several studies have been devoted to finding connections between the two areas, many of
which have provided more insight as to the true motivation behind altruism and charity as well as the
impact of emotional experiences on human decision-making. This study intended to test precisely which
emotions encourage charitable behaviors by manipulating the emotions felt by each test subject and then
measuring how much altruism they would demonstrate immediately after. Though the experiment’s
credibility and accuracy are greatly limited by the small number of participants that were recruited and
several errors in the methodology, the results ultimately concluded that sadness was the emotion most
likely to induce altruistic behaviors.

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