Chicago and New York researchers found a contradiction in charitable giving. If the homeless person holding the contribution cup is dressed in a professional suit, people are more likely to donate.

What is charity?

Charity is the act of giving help to people in need out of a sense of humanity and not because you want something in return.

T-shirts and jeans were considered lower-class than suits. When wearing this attire, the charity collector received significantly worse scores on warmth, competence, humanism, and reliability.  Despite throwing money in his cup, few people talked to him.

The authors think that the look of the T-shirt made people less likely to give money to charity collectors. This man may have seemed less “worthy,” trustworthy, or easy to talk to because of how he was dressed.

Although a seemingly good behaviour, pedestrians may promote economic inequality by donating to the wealthy.

Key facts!

• The findings show that pedestrians on crowded city streets judge a person’s social status based on how they look and give them money based on that.
• Research has shown that our beliefs about other people’s social backgrounds can affect our first impressions.
• Poverty can make people less empathetic and less human, which can make them feel even more alone.
• According to the current study, humans can figure out social hierarchies and where they fit in them by being able to sense the social class of others.
•  As well as patterns of social perception that implicitly justify social rankings by showing the bottom as unfit or undeserving.
• The main researcher says, “As economic inequality grows in many countries, the burden of dealing with its bad effects has increasingly fallen on people who aren’t doing well financially or on regular people who are kind.”

Similar Stories

• Human Behavior Psychology Unwraps Gift Giving
• 24 Hours: Universal Human Behaviors!
• Does facing your fears benefit your brain?

Watch a video

Youtube user “Pebbles Kids Stories” shares with us an adorable story about charity.

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