Keywords:
Christmas, Xmas, Black Friday, charity, economics, experimental
economics
Ooooh,
hello
dear English speaking-reading-hearing listener, welcome back to
me,
@sciencemug,
the blog/podcast/twitter&instagram
accounts/entity behind the unsuccessful e-shop stuffngo
on zazzle.com
which can hold its breath for 55 straight hours since it has neither
lungs nor cardiovascular system (let alone a brain in need of oxygen), aaand which
talks to you thanks to the voice, kidnapped via a voodoo-wireless
trick, from a veeery very very dumb human.
Aaand
which does all of this in Eng?ish, a language that is to proper
English what to publish the second part of a Xmas episode closer to
Valentine’s day than to Christmas itself is to something belonging
to the realm of the things that make even a pale imitation of
sense...
Soo
dear listener, in the previous
episode
I told you the first of two studies (study
1
and study 2) about seasonal
effects on people’s propensity to donate to charity
and ‘bout its surprising findings:
on Christmas
time donations
are less than on summer
time, and this is a trend
unexpectedly driven
by prosocial individuals
(i.e.
people with a predisposition to generosity), who
donate less frequently and less money
during winter Holidays.
The
studies
are performed
by two
researchers
of the German University of Gottingen,
Dr. Stephan Muller and Professor of Experimental Economics Holger A. Rau
(aka
the
Rau's
Duo, or the RDs)
and are published on a
paper
(P)
on the open access scientific journal PLOSONE.
In
this episode,
dear listener, I’ll tell you what the RDs do to understand why is
that people, especially prosocials, are less generous on Xmas time
than on summer, in other words, what
are the “[d]rivers
of the lower donations“
(P).
So,
the Rau’s
Duo
performs
its
second study (study
2)
the week
after the Black Friday, that is in November.
The researchers recruit again
subjects
from
the Gottingen University,
but none
of those already involved
in
the previous study (study
1)
or in other similar studies.
The
RDs pick 72 persons
(42
females and 30 males)
between 18 and 50 years old with
an average
age of 22 and a half.
The
first
part of study 2 is identical to study
1
(do you remember dear reader? Semi fake money called Talers that can
be donated to the German Red Cross, Social
Value Orientation (SVO)
evaluation of prosocials, individualistics,
competitives, and so on and on (if you don’t remember, dear
listener, well, don’t worry, just check the previous post/episode
and maybe consider implementing your diet with some phosphorus, but
hurry up mate, since world’s irreplaceable reserves of this essential stuff are
depleting at an alarming rate (see)).
Anyway,
dear listener, of the 72 individuals
initially selected for study 2, only 66
are eventually tested
(of which fifty
are prosocials,
and sixteen
individualistics).
The competitives and the “none of the above” are indeed, as
happened in study 1, discharged.
So,
dear listener, surprise surprise, the results
of this first
part of study 2
are basically the
same of study 1:
meaning those sneaky prosocials
are the ones responsible
for sinking the donations rate on Xmas season,
while individualistics are steady cheap lads both in summer and
winter holiday time.
At
this point
the second
phase
of study
2 starts.
Unlike
in
study 1,
