Effect of mortality salience on charitable donations: Evidence from a national sample.
Abstract
= 5,376). In the mortality-salience (vs. control) condition, participants donated on average 25 cents more to charity, out of their $5 budget. This finding was unaffected by adult age or charity type, suggesting its generalizability. However, older adults donated more than younger adults. Auxiliary analyses suggested that fear of death was likely not the main mechanism underlying our findings. We discuss implications for literatures on mortality salience, aging, and charitable giving. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the meta-analytic sample, only two studies meet the requirement of 357 participants per condition.
“In our sample, only two studies (Bruine de Bruin and Ulqinaku 2021; Okazaki et al. 2019) meet that requirement.”
From Terror Management Theory in the Consumer Domain: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis on Mortality Salience Driven Consumer Responses (2025) · cites this paper as Bruine de Bruin and Ulqinaku 2021
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 25 · Cited by 20
Research works printed but not linked: 15
- Alattar, L., Messel, M., & Rogofsky, C. (2018). An introduction to the Understanding American Study internet panel. Social Security Bulletin, 78, 13-28.
- Barasch, A., Levine, E. E., Berman, J. Z., & Small, D. A. (2014). Selfish or selfless? On the signal value of emotion in altruistic behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 107 (3), 393.
- Bekkers, R., & Wiepking, P. (2011). Who gives? A literature review of predictors of charitable giving: Part 1. Religion, education, age and socialization. Voluntary Sector Review, 2 , 337-365.
- Florian, V., & Kravetz, S. (1983). Fear of personal death: Attribution, structure, and relation to religious belief. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44 , 600-607.
- Florian, V., & Mikulincer, M. (1997). Fear of death and the judgment of social transgressions: A multidimensional test of terror management theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 369-380.
- Fredrickson, B. L. (1995). Socioemotional behavior at the end of college life. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships , 12 , 261-276.
- Hirschberger, G., Ein-Dor, T., & Almakias, S. (2008). The self-protective altruist: Terror management and the ambivalent nature of prosocial behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 34 , 666-678.
- Hubbard, J., Harbaugh, W.T., Srivastava, S., Degras, D., & Mayr, U. (2016). A general benevolence dimension that links neural, psychological, economic, and life-span data on altruistic tendencies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145 , 13511358.
- Imas, A. (2014). Working for the 'warm glow': On the benefits and limits of prosocial incentives. Journal of Public Economics , 114 , 14-18.
- Joireman, J., & Duell, B. (2005). Mother Teresa versus Ebenezer Scrooge: Mortality salience leads proselfs to endorse self-transcendent values (unless proselfs are reassured). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 31 , 307-320.
- Maxfield, M., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Weise, D. R., Kosloff, S., Soenke, M., & Blatter, J. (2014). Increases in generative concern among older adults following reminders of mortality. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development , 79 , 1-21.
- Schimel, J., Simon, L., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Waxmonsky, J., & Arndt, J. (1999). Stereotypes and terror management: Evidence that mortality salience enhances stereotypic thinking and preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 77 (5), 905-926.
- Strough, J., Schlosnagle, L., Karns, T., LeMaster, P., & Pichayayothin, N. (2014). No time to waste: Restricting life-span temporal horizons decreases the sunk-cost fallacy. Journal of Behavioural Decision Making, 27, 78-94.
- Tourangeau, R., Conrad, F.G., & Couper, M.P. (2013). The science of web surveys. New York NY: Oxford University Press
- Zagefka, H., & James, T. (2015). The psychology of charitable donations to disaster victims and beyond. Social Issues and Policy Review, 9, 155-192.
- Authors
- Bruine de Bruin, W., & Ulqinaku, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Leeds (GB)
- Venue
- Psychology and Aging
- Published
- 2021-06
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 415-420
- ISSN
- 0882-7974 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1498
- OpenAlex
- W3087885761
- Cited by
- 20
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2025: 4 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4
- FWCI
- 3.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychology and Aging (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Swedish Foundation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology › Aging and Gerontology Research
- Keywords
- mortality salience, charitable giving, fear of death, aging, older adults, prosocial behavior
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Aging, Charities, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Mortality, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
