Thinking, good and bad? Identifying the psychological mechanisms underlying charitable giving

During this sabbatical, my aim is to provide a novel theoretical background when and why people decide to help others drawing on empirical findings from research from me and my international collaborators.

The main tenet of this new review article is that thinking might be both good and bad when the goal is to increase charitable giving.

The paper will propose that “introspection” – a method where people introspect about their personal values, will help them to overcome “weigthing biases” in prosocial decisions.

The goal of the review paper is thus to synthesize research from diverse sources such experimental psychology, neuroscience and economics on how weigthing biases might occur and how introspection might deploy different affective and cognitive mechanisms to counter such “thinking biases”.