Life or Death Decisions: Framing the Call for Help

Eileen Y. Chou · John Keith Murnighan

56 citations0/0 files storedPLoS ONE

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Blood donation and transfusion practices Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics Psychology of Social Influence

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Chronic blood shortages in the U.S. would be alleviated by small increases, in percentage terms, of people donating blood. The current research investigated the effects of subtle changes in charity-seeking messages on the likelihood of people responses to a call for help. We predicted that "avoid losses" messages would lead to more helping behavior than "promote gains" messages would. METHOD: Two studies investigated the effects of message framing on helping intentions and behaviors. With the help and collaboration of the Red Cross, Study 1, a field experiment, directly assessed the effectiveness of a call for blood donations that was presented as either death-preventing (losses) or life-saving (gains), and as being of either more or less urgent need. With the help and collaboration of a local charity, Study 2, a lab experiment, assessed the effects of the gain-versus-loss framing of a donation-soliciting flyer on individuals' expectations of others' monetary donations as well their own volunteering behavior. Study 2 also assessed the effects of three emotional motivators - feelings of empathy, positive affect, and relational closeness. RESULT: Study 1 indicated that, on a college campus, describing blood donations as a way to "prevent a death" rather than "save a life" boosted the donation rate. Study 2 showed that framing a charity's appeals as helping people to avoid a loss led to larger expected donations, increased intentions to volunteer, and more helping behavior, independent of other emotional motivators. CONCLUSION: This research identifies and demonstrates a reliable and effective method for increasing important helping behaviors by providing charities with concrete ideas that can effectively increase helping behavior generally and potentially death-preventing behavior in particular.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 56 citations exist upstream.

References

1979Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk 1988Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk 1992Advances in prospect theory: Cumulative representation of uncertainty 1971The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism 2001Bad is Stronger than Good 1971Social categorization and intergroup behaviour 1998All Frames Are Not Created Equal: A Typology and Critical Analysis of Framing Effects 1997Shaping perceptions to motivate healthy behavior: The role of message framing.

Cited by

2020For the Greater Good? The Devastating Ripple Effects of the Covid-19 Crisis 2021Appeal to the head and heart: The persuasive effects of medical crowdfunding charitable appeals on willingness to donate 2017Who donates? Cross‐country and periodical variation in blood donor demographics in Europe between 1994 and 2014 2020Effect of appeal content on fundraising success and donor behavior 2024Impact of Project Updates and Their Social Endorsement in Online Medical Crowdfunding

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.