Moral identity and empathy promote prosocial behavior only toward blameless AIDS patients.

Abstract

Moral identity and empathy are two important contributors of charitable donation. But there are also inconsistent findings which suggest the existence of moderating variables. This research investigated their effects on charitable donation when the fictional recipients have or have not responsibility for HIV infection. Through four between-subjects experiments, we respectively explored the effect of responsibility of AIDS patients (blameless vs. blameful; manipulated by different ways of HIV infection) on donation, and its interaction with trait moral identity (study 1a, n = 313, Mage = 19.37, 70% females), primed moral identity (study 1b, n = 392, Mage = 19.43, 72% females), trait empathy (study 2a, n = 310, Mage = 19.34, 67% females), and primed empathy (study 2b, n = 366, Mage = 19.39, 55% females). Measures of moral identity and empathy, and a priming technique with moral identity and empathy words as stimuli were used research tools. The results demonstrated that when AIDS patients were not responsible for their plight (blameless), moral identity and empathy (regardless of trait or activated) showed positive effects on donation. When AIDS patients were responsible for their plight (blameful), however, all positive effects disappeared. Trait moral identity even showed a negative effect on donation. These results indicated that the prosocial effects of moral identity and empathy are conditioned by characteristics of the beneficiaries.