like caring, generous, and kind or neutral terms like book, keys, and house. After the participants
filled out another questionnaire, a researcher asked them if they wanted to donate money to a charity
of their choosing. Those who wrote about themselves as givers donated an average of two and a half
times less money than those who wrote about themselves with neutral words. “I’m a giving person,”
they told themselves, “so I don’t have to donate this time.” The kindness pledge might have a similar
effect on Harvard students. When they sign the pledge, they establish credentials as givers, which may
grant them a psychological license to give less—or take more.
When we’re trying to influence someone, we often adopt an approach that mirrors the Harvard
pledge: we start by changing their attitudes, hoping that their behaviors are likely to march in the same
direction. If we get people to sign a statement that they’ll act like givers, they’ll come to believe that
giving is important, and then they’ll give. But according to a rich body of psychological detective
work, this reasoning is backward. Influence is far more powerful in the opposite direction: change
people’s behaviors first, and their attitudes often follow. To turn takers into givers, it’s often
necessary to convince them to start giving. Over time, if the conditions are right, they’ll come to see
themselves as givers.
This didn’t happen to the bank tellers in China: even after three months of helping colleagues,
once they got promoted, they stopped giving. Over the past thirty-five years, research launched by
Batson and his colleagues shows that when people give, if they can attribute it to an external reason
like a promotion, they don’t start to think of themselves as givers. But when people repeatedly make
the personal choice to give to others, they start to internalize giving as part of their identities. For
some people, this happens through an active process of cognitive dissonance: once I’ve made the
voluntary decision to give, I can’t change the behavior, so the easiest way to stay consistent and avoid
hypocrisy is to decide that I’m a giver. For other people, the internalization process is one of learning
from observing their own behaviors. To paraphrase the writer E. M. Forster, “How do I know who I
am until I see what I do?”
In support of this idea, studies of volunteering show that even when people join a volunteer
organization to advance their own careers, the longer they serve and the more time they give, the more
they begin to view the volunteering role as an important aspect of their identities. Once that happens,
they start to experience a common identity with the people they’re helping, and they become givers in
that role. Research documents a similar process inside companies: as people make voluntary
decisions to help colleagues and customers beyond the scope of their jobs, they come to see
themselves as organizational citizens.*
Part of the wisdom behind Freecycle and the Reciprocity Ring is that both of these generalized
giving systems encourage giving while maintaining a sense of free choice. Although there’s a strong
norm of giving, it’s entirely up to each participant to decide what to give and whom to help. When my
Wharton class went through the Reciprocity Ring, as different students chose their own ways to give
and peers to help, a distinctive common identity began to develop. “This is a unique group of people
at Wharton that cares about each other,” one student said. Although the students were competing for
the same jobs in management consulting and investment banking, they started helping one another
prepare for interviews, sharing tips and offering advice. After the class ended, a group of students
took the initiative to start an alumni listserv so that they could continue helping one another.
According to one student, “because of the emphasis on the benefit of giving and helping in our shared
community, I’d be far more comfortable and likely to ask for (and probably receive) help from a
michael s
(Michael S)
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