Prosocial Poison: Using Sadness to Prompt Help Giving May Alienate Potential Help Seekers
Marketers have developed a rich literature encouraging prosocial giving, but without beneficiaries prosocial entities cannot fulfill their missions to help others. We show how one popular and well-cited fundraising tactic—portraying help seekers in ads as sad—can decrease help seeking because of that tactic’s effect on help seekers’ self-esteem.
Citation:
Andrew Smith and Cait Lamberton (2021) ,"Prosocial Poison: Using Sadness to Prompt Help Giving May Alienate Potential Help Seekers", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 49, eds. Tonya Williams Bradford, Anat Keinan, and Matthew Matthew Thomson, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 280-281.
Authors
Andrew Smith, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Cait Lamberton, University of Pennsylvania
Volume
NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 49 | 2021
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