Dimensions of Altruism: Do Evaluations of Prosocial Behavior Track Social Good or Personal Sacrifice?

Do we praise prosocial acts because they produce social benefits or because they entail a personal sacrifice? Seven studies demonstrate that people primarily rely on personal cost rather than social benefit when evaluating prosocial actors. This occurs because sacrifice, but not benefit, is taken as a signal of moral character and an input to reputational judgments (Studies 1 and 2), reflecting a “character = sacrifice” heuristic predicted by costly signaling theory. The studies test four possible boundary conditions, finding that the effects are similar for actions that benefit one’s own country versus foreigners (Study 3), but differ for donations of time (Study 4), when information about personal sacrifice is unavailable (Study 5), and when high-cost but ineffective acts are pitted directly against low-cost but effective acts in joint evaluation (Study 6). Inferences about the signaling value of donations differed sharply from intuitions about warm glow, which strongly favored more effective donations (Study 7). These results help to account for the ineffectiveness of many charitable activities but also suggest directions for incentivizing effective charity.