Helping Yourself before Helping Others: How Sense of Control Promotes Charitable Behaviors

This research elucidates the conditions under which distress appeals can evoke the instinct to help without turning recipients away from uncomfortable situations. Five experiments demonstrated with behavioral evidence that evoking a sense of control by irrelevant causes prior to appeal exposure can increase the likelihood of registering as a volunteer (Studies 1 and 3) and the tendency to donate (Studies 2, 4, and 5) in a subsequent unrelated...