Philosophical arguments can boost charitable giving

Do reasoned arguments increase charitable giving? Evidence is mixed. One possible explanation is that arguments vary in effectiveness. We crowdsourced 90 philosophical arguments in favor of charitable giving, coding them for a variety of features. In Study 1 (N=2161, MTurk), participants read either a control text or one of five arguments preselected as especially promising. Participants who read the philosophical arguments expressed more positive attitudes towards donating and donated about $1 more on average of a potential $10 bonus than participants who read the control text. Study 2 (N=8982, MTurk) employed all 90 arguments, with each participant reading one argument. We analyzed the relationship between the coded argument features and donation behavior, and found arguments to be more effective when they mentioned children, mentioned the specific impacts of donating, and/or emphasized that large benefits can be achieved at low cost. Among the features less predictive of donation: addressing counterarguments, mentioning the equivalence of persons or the participant’s own assumed good fortune, appealing to religion or expert authorities, or appealing to the participant’s self-interest. Together, these studies provide evidence that reasoned arguments can indeed shift moral behavior such as charitable giving, but that some arguments are simply more effective than others. Further, we identify specific argument features that are most and least effective in eliciting donations.