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Don’t pull on their heart strings, tug on their “me” strings.
Narcissists are more likely to donate to charity if the request focuses on them — not the recipient. That’s the finding of new research from the University at Buffalo School of Management.
When charities asked narcissists to imagine the plight of someone else — say, a refugee or someone suffering from a rare disease — they were less likely to donate. But when charities asked narcissists to imagine themselves in the midst of such tragedies, they opened their wallets.
“Charitable giving is about having empathy — recognizing and responding to the needs and emotions of other people,” said study co-author Arun Lakshmanan, an associate professor of marketing. “Narcissists have difficulty with that, so asking them to imagine themselves as the person in need can help elicit genuine concern and, thus, donations.”
Lakshmanan and co-researcher Esther Kang, an assistant professor of consumer psychology and behavior at the University of Cologne, analyzed 1,300 people’s responses to charitable appeals. They measured the potential donors’ levels of narcissism and tracked how they responded to different types of charitable appeals.
Known for their larger-than-life personalities and delusions of grandeur, narcissists tend to have trouble recognizing and responding to the needs of others, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Despite the findings, Lakshmanan noted that charities shouldn’t abandon traditional appeals that focus on the plight of recipients. In people with lower levels of narcissism, those appeals work equally as well as requests that asked the donor to picture themselves in need of help.
Charitable giving has been on the rise in recent years, with a 3.9% increase between 2015 and 2016, according to the most recent Giving USA annual report. But the boom could be ending: U.S. charities are expecting a $21 billion drop per year in donations because of the GOP-led changes to U.S. tax law.