Observed biases in how people value human life have sparked an area of research investigating the mental processes leading to the devaluing of mass suffering. Parallel lines of research in psychology, economics, marketing, and environmental sciences are seeking to understand why people act to help others at all. The emotional and deliberative process in contexts of giving behaviors are complex and evolving. This dissertation focuses on one such bias: pseudoinefficacy, or the dampening of anticipated positive affect from giving, driven by the sense that we cannot help everyone at risk in given context.
First a literature review of the relevant studies and previous work on the concept of “warm glow” is presented. Next, two studies are described that were conducted in an effort to replicate previous findings and test a possible de-biasing intervention: structured introspection. A structured introspection task that asked participants to think deeply about the factors influencing their prosocial decisions was tested against instructions to deliberate and against a no-instruction control. Results were mixed. The pseudoinefficacy manipulation failed to replicate previous findings of dampened positive affect by being reminded of individual outside of reach for help. The introspection condition showed no obvious benefit in a one-shot donation paradigm. However, a study on blood donation found a significant increase in self-efficacy from the introspective task, leading to greater intentions to donate, and indirectly increasing actual donation behavior compared to the other conditions. An exploration of the data and future directions are discussed
