Altruistic Giving Toward Refugees: Identifying Factors That Increase Citizens' Willingness to Help

Over the past decade, the world has faced an unprecedented refugee crisis. The large number of incoming refugees represents a challenge for host societies and its citizens triggering reactions from a supportive welcome to brusque rejection and hostile behavior toward refugees. In a pre-registered st...

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Veröffentlicht in:Frontiers in psychology Jg. 12; S. 689184
Hauptverfasser: Hellmann, Dshamilja Marie, Fiedler, Susann, Glöckner, Andreas
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: Frontiers Media S.A 09.08.2021
Schlagworte:
altruism
prosociality
Psychology
refugee help
shared identity
social closeness
ISSN:1664-1078, 1664-1078
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Zusammenfassung:Over the past decade, the world has faced an unprecedented refugee crisis. The large number of incoming refugees represents a challenge for host societies and its citizens triggering reactions from a supportive welcome to brusque rejection and hostile behavior toward refugees. In a pre-registered study, we investigated factors that could promote altruistic behavior in fully incentivized one-shot Dictator Game toward various receiver groups including refugees. We find that host citizens behave more altruistically toward refugees and other receiver groups if they (a) share a local identity with them (i.e., live in the same city), and (b) perceive them to be close (to the self) and warm-hearted. Moreover, citizens that are (c) generally more prosocial and hold a more left-wing political orientation are more willing to give. Unexpectedly, from a theoretical point of view, altruistic giving toward refugees was not influenced in the predicted direction by a shared student identity, competition and perceived income differences (although the latter effect was significant when considering all receiver groups). For shared student identity we even observe a reduction of altruistic behavior, while the opposite effect was predicted. We discuss implications for public policies for successful refugee helping and integration.
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Edited by: Gari Walkowitz, Technical University of Munich, Germany
This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
Reviewed by: Valerio Capraro, Middlesex University, United Kingdom; Edward Millner, Virginia Commonwealth University, United States
ISSN:1664-1078
1664-1078
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689184