Last weekend, I participated in
the Vagina Monologues. The Vagina Monologues is a play, mostly done in a series
of monologues from different women’s perspectives on their experiences as
women. Some of the monologues are compilations from many of Eve Ensler’s
interviews while some are written by compiling many women’s stories. The Vagina
Monologues does an excellent job in representation. The voices of women from
different racial, class, and ethnic backgrounds as well as women of different
ages, sexualities, and transgendered women are all included to make a powerful
commentary on the status of women, their relationships with their bodies, and
society’s relationship with their bodies. The play is free to put on so long as
all proceeds go to a local women’s shelter. In our case, the nearly $800 we
raised went to RISE, the local shelter in Binghamton that provides services for
female victims of domestic violence and their children.
After reading the NPR
piece “What Motivates People to Give?” I realized how it applied to how we
collected money for tickets and donations at the Vagina Monologues. The NPR
interview talked about why people give and negates the idea that the main
reason is altruism. In actuality, studies show that people primarily give due
to social pressure because they don’t want to say no to peoples faces and end up looking like a bad person. For our
show, the entrance fee was only $3. However, we also had a bucket out, asking
for extra donations if people were willing to give. When one person gave extra
money in the bucket while on line to purchase tickets, it was likely the person
behind them would also give. This chain would go on until someone decided not
to give, and looked very uncomfortable. The person after them would usually end
up giving, probably because they thought the person in front of them was a bad
person for not donating extra money and they didn’t want to be a bad person
too. Also, during some of the showings, we had people in the directing staff go
around to people seated and ask for extra donations. When personally asked to
give more, people generally did. Social pressure even works on college students
that tend to try to save as much money as they can for books… or spending money
for going out.
So, how is it possible to know if
people are giving because they genuinely care about the issue they’re giving to
or if they’re just giving so they don’t seem like selfish people?
In this Ted Talk, the speaker
Ben Wright tells his personal story experiencing altruism when he was in a
biking accident. When the accident occurred, people rushed across a busy street
to try and help him. Based on his experience and his interest in psychology, he
has determined that people are inherently altruistic based on the neurons that
cause empathy. He also says that even though people see and experience things,
they might not necessarily jump right into helping. He believes that social
identity forms the actions that are taken when considering empathy. Therefore,
according to Ben, people are more likely to help those who are like them in
some way. But how true to altruism is that, really? Meaning, if we are more
likely to help people like ourselves, is that really selfless action? Are we
only helping because we se ourselves in that person and would like someone to
help us if we were in the same predicament? Do our philanthropic values only come
from a place of selfish and self-interest?
I found your post to be really interesting - not only because I got to learn a bit about the Vagina Monologues and how it benefits the community, but it also begs the reader to answer questions that test our morals and beliefs about giving to charity.
ReplyDeleteYes I do agree with you when you claim that donors are more likely to donate their money and time to organizations that bring change to a topic that the donor specifically cares about. For example, in this case, RISE who provides services for females and their children recovering from domestic violence. I could see a donor giving a large sum of money to RISE because they either were a victim of domestic abuse or they know someone who is a victim of domestic abuse. Often times, people are more likely to donate to causes that personally affect them or emotionally affect them. For example, in the article that we read last week titled "Two Paths For Charitable Giving", the writer connects his own interests to the type of philanthropy work that he does. He has a personal connection to help train dogs for people who are disabled so he has a real passion for donating his time and money to specific organizations that address this issue. However I do believe that there are plenty of people who donate time and money into organizations just because they have a great mission - not so much because they have a personal connection as you say in your blog. I don't think that it is fair to judge whether people's philanthropic values come from a place of selfishness or self-interest because I believe that giving back in and of itself is a good act. At the end of the day, giving back to the community is fundamentally good and positive. So how is it fair for us to judge why people donate money and time in the manner that they do? Personally, I do not help others because I see myself in that person or want to help someone that is in a similar predicament. I help others because I truly want to positively impact someone else's life and help them alleviate some of the struggles that they may be going through.
I can completely relate to what you said in your blog about people giving due to social pressure. Your anecdote about one person’s initial donation causing a chain reaction of giving is all too familiar. When I was in high school, I would busk on the weekends for extra cash. Busking is another term for street performing and New York City is well known for it. I would perform by playing my violin on subway platforms and strategically timed it so that there would be an influx of people coming my way right before peak hours when foot traffic became too hectic. I found, much like yourself, that once one person threw in a dollar, the person behind him would stop and give one as well, therefore causing the person behind him to contribute something. This pattern would continue until foot traffic stopped, I finished a piece, or someone didn’t give. I would like to think that every person who contributed did so because of my talent but most likely it came from seeing a cycle this briefly established social norm created and not wanting to be the one to break it.
ReplyDeleteIt is difficult to say from pure observation whether people give because they see a trend or give because they truly believe in a cause. Perhaps every person who gave to the Vagina Monologues in the chain sequence you described truly did want to give regardless of the actions of people around them. Perhaps if they were in the front of the line, they would have given as well therefore showing that their donation wasn’t the result of a coincidence of their placement in line but rather an inevitable consequence of their willingness to contribute to RISE. I believe it is important that we introspectively assess why we give because it helps us understand our underlying motivations and allows us to examine ourselves. However, I do not believe that it is right for us to judge why others give because who are we to determine whether or not their donation was righteous? Why is there a stigma against selfish giving? Why do we say ‘She donated but it was only because of (insert selfish reason)? Why does it matter if someone gives for selfish reasons when in the end, their donation helps a cause in need? If anything, isn’t it a win-win situation for both the organization and donor? Is the goal of this conversation to determine a singular reason for giving that is above all others? If so, how is that determined? Can it even be determined? These are questions I’ve had throughout our discussions in class and questions i’ve asked myself playing devil’s advocate. It’s frustrating that there is no definitive answer.
Great post, the topic of motivation and social pressure is interesting and complex. On the one hand, I agree that it’s not a bad thing to donate for social reasons. In a pragmatic sense, if someone donates to a good cause when they otherwise would not have done so, that’s great! Regardless of personal motivation, people are being helped by this donation of time or money. Even some celebrities who may be donating purely for PR are making a huge positive difference for a cause. Likewise, I agree with Christy that many people, celebrities included, are doing philanthropy for the simple fact that they want to help others. In the end, it’s the result that matters. Like Batman says, “It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”
DeleteOn the other hand, there are some pitfalls that come with socially-fueled donations. Like we discussed earlier when talking about David Brooks’ article, if someone is not truly connected to a cause, they may not end up making as positive an impact as they had hoped. In this sense, if someone is motivated to give purely because they are pressured to do so standing on line, they may not want to donate to that cause again or actually be interested in it. Yet, if someone is genuinely interested in a cause and donates because they have a personal connection to it, they may donate again and again over time and possibly become involved in advocacy or volunteering. Thus, it is much more valuable to have one self-motivated donor who donates for 10 years straight than maybe 10 donors who all donate one time because they feel guilty or want to look good.
If you don’t buy the Brooks argument, social pressure also has a much more pragmatic pitfall: it skews donations towards causes that have more attention. For example, the Ice Bucket Challenge was an amazingly popular phenomenon that relied on social media pressure to raise awareness and money for ALS research. Similarly, breast cancer awareness campaigns have been incredibly successful; it’s now commonplace to see pink ribbons on bumpers, cereal boxes, politicians, TV ads, etc. Both these campaigns utilize social pressure really well to raise money for really really really good causes (believe me, I’m not knocking either of these amazing causes). However, when you look at this graph compiled by Vox http://bit.ly/1UBvfyi, it’s clear that high-attention diseases like Breast Cancer and ALS get a lot more funding proportionally than other diseases, like diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which have a much higher number of people affected. In this way, social pressure may be diverting efforts from causes that aren’t as popular, yet still important.
Despite these pitfalls, social pressure can still act as a great way to connect people with causes. In many cases, I presume that social pressure can act as the “last straw” (albeit a pretty heavy straw) that causes someone to donate to a cause they may already have had good intentions about. It can also help raise awareness of causes and help create new donations that may not have happened in the first place. In my opinion, social pressure can be a blessing and a curse.