(The) impact of charitable giving on creativity

Abstract

What good is charitable giving for the giver? While previous research has explored ways of increasing charitable donations and their associated emotional benefits, the cognitive consequences of giving for the giver have been largely overlooked. In the present research, we propose that charitable giving behavior, or the act of giving money, improves giver creativity. Specifically, we examine whether and how charitable giving of money enhance giver creativity with a series of five experiments. Results from the experiments support our hypothesis that charitable giving of money improves the giver’s creativity when the consequences of the giving are not specific and the giver in question has a high-level construal (thinks of the outcome of giving rather than means). Giving money charitably involves outcomes unknown to the giver, such behavior promotes creativity for givers who contemplate unknown yet useful consequences of their giving act. As such, charitable giving behavior with non-specific consequences appears to motivate givers with a high-level construal to imagine novel ways in which their money will be useful for others, and thus activates creative cognition. Indeed, we observe the creativity-boosting effect of charitable giving only when givers contemplated the unknown consequences of their charitable behavior.