Are they giving scarce resources away?: Types of prosocial behavior modulate the prosocial effects of target social class on others

Abstract

People tend to perceive others' prosocial behavior as valuable and genuine when it is costly. Given that money (vs. time) is relatively scarcer for lower-class (vs. upper-class) people, we propose that the effect of target social class on others' prosocial intentions would vary across the donation and volunteering contexts. Specifically, we hypothesized that people would exhibit greater motivation to engage in prosocial behaviors when observing donation from lower-class targets than from those of upper-class, whereas the opposite would be the case for volunteering. The results across four studies (N = 984; Study 3 preregistered) supported our predictions. The predicted interaction effect between target social class and the type of prosocial behaviors emerged not only in participants' prosocial intentions (Studies 1–3), but also in their behavioral intentions (Study 4). Furthermore, the present research showed that perceived resource scarcity (Studies 2–4), self-reflection (Study 3), and genuineness (Study 4) served as significant mediators for the interaction effect between target social class and types of prosocial behaviors on participants' prosocial intentions.