Center for Social Innovation

Prosocial Behavior Research: Fall 2010 Column

In this quarter’s column, we look at how charities get people to give — and give generously.

Like companies looking for customers, many philanthropic organizations have turned to advertising to attract donor dollars. In fact, large American nonprofits spend at least $7.6 billion per year on marketing. Inevitably, charity ads attempt to inspire personal interest in their cause, which often involves placing photos of the people they serve on media materials.

With more than 800,000 charities in the United States alone competing for limited largess, organizations will want to have one important question answered: Are certain types of photos more likely to appeal to donors’ sympathy than others?

An interesting new study coming out in the Journal of Marketing Research by Deborah Small says yes. Small, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of Business, finds that photos of needy potential clients work best to stimulate giving when they depict people with sad facial expressions.

Why? Because facial expressions elicit vicarious emotions — a phenomenon Small calls emotional contagion. Show someone a happy face, and she’s likely to feel happy herself. Show her a sad face, and she’s liable to start feeling sad. “Catching” others’ feelings by responding to their facial expressions happens automatically and unconsciously.

In the case of a charity photo, then, a sad face leads observers to feel the pain of the person depicted. That, in turn, stimulates sympathy — and thus, donations to the organization that promise to help such an individual.