“Demeaning” aid: How dehumanization of recipients affects aid decisions
Attempts to be prosocial are not always successful. Indeed, givers of aid are subject to biases that can reduce the effectiveness of their aid. As just one example, aid-givers tend to provide more aid when viewing a single, identified victim than countless, unidentified victims, although the latter constitutes greater need (e.g., Cameron & Payne, 2011; Slovic, 2007; Small & Loewenstein, 2003). Here, we examine how givers’ inferences about recipients—particularly, their tendency to dehumanize recipients—can lead to ineffective giving. Moving beyond prior research, which finds that aid recipients tend to be seen as low-competence and low-warmth relative to other groups of people (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002), we provide evidence for two other dehumanizing attributions that can affect aid. First, people may tend to characterize aid recipients as lacking the ability to take care of themselves (e.g., lacking self-control, regulatory abilities) and consequently treat them more paternalistically than aid-recipients would prefer, and more paternalistically than they would treat themselves (Schroeder, Waytz, & Epley, 2017). They may also consider it inappropriate for aid-recipients to request agency over their donations (e.g., “beggars can’t be choosers”; Kassirer & Schroeder, working paper). Second, people may tend to focus more on aid-recipients’ physical than mental needs – a phenomenon we call “demeaning” (Schroeder & Epley, 2020) – which can lead to deprioritizing recipients’ mental health, especially relative to their physical health (Kassirer, Geiser, & Schroeder, working paper). Overall, this body of research identifies novel biases in attributions toward aid-recipients that can explain decisions for when and how to provide aid.