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Abstract
Organisations often put children front and centre in campaigns to elicit interest and support for prosocial causes. Such initiatives raise a key theoretical and applied question that has yet to be addressed directly: Does the salience of children increase prosocial motivation and behaviour in adults? We present findings aggregated across eight experiments involving 2,054 adult participants: Prosocial values became more important after completing tasks that made children salient compared to tasks that made adults (or a mundane event) salient or compared to a no-task baseline. An additional field study showed that adults were more likely to donate money to a child-unrelated cause when children were more salient on a shopping street. The findings suggest broad, reliable interconnections between human mental representations of children and prosocial motives, as the child salience effect was not moderated by participants’ gender, age, attitudes, or contact with children.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 160-169 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Social Psychological and Personality Science |
Volume | 13 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 16 Apr 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2022 |
Keywords
- children
- donation behavior
- human values
- infants
- prosocial
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Clinical Psychology
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Dive into the research topics of 'The Salience of Children Increases Adult Prosocial Values'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Effects of Mental Representations of Children on Prosocial Motivation
1/09/17 → 30/09/21
Project: Research council