Could reminding the rich of their legacy encourage charitable giving?

It's no secret that the world has a wealth distribution problem. The UK is no exception — in fact, according to The Equality Trust, it's one of the top offenders amongst other developed nations, with the UK's 50 richest families holding more than the combined wealth of half of the UK population in 2023. 

Research suggests that wealthy people are much more likely to leave their fortunes to family members rather than to good causes. Making a case for charitable giving that the super-wealthy find convincing, then, could have a significant impact on the (re)distribution of wealth. 

Writing in Social Psychological and Personality Science, Jessica Paek and her colleagues at Duke University explore what they call the "Andrew Carnegie Effect", named after the famed U.S. philanthropist. Over four studies, they find that encouraging people to consider how their lives and legacy could impact future generations can have a significant impact on how they choose to distribute their wealth — representing a potentially powerful lever in promoting philanthropy.

In the first study, 1,524 participants, all of whom were parents, were assigned to one of four conditions. In the legacy condition, they were asked to complete a short writing exercise, considering the ways in which they would like to have a lasting impact on future generations. Those in the self-awareness condition wrote about how conscious they were of how others perceived them, and in the future self condition, about who they felt they would be in the future. Participants in the passive control condition did not engage in a writing task.

Next, participants from all four conditions decided how they would allocate $100,000 to future generations — to their grandchildren's college education, an inheritance for their children,  research to find cures for cancer, or scholarships to fund students' education. They were also given explanations of primary and secondary beneficiaries to a will, and asked to choose examples of these from a selection including family members and friends and educational, health, or environmental organisations.

As the team had predicted, those who had reflected on their legacy in the writing task were more likely to allocate their wealth to collectivist causes and more likely to choose collectivistic secondary beneficiaries than those in the other conditions. A second study replicated these findings, as well as finding that those in the legacy condition were also more likely to consider future generations as part of their "inner moral circle", considering them worthy of full moral consideration at the same level as loved ones.

The team's third study cut to the heart of the matter: in it, they investigated whether bringing one's legacy to mind would make participants more likely to donate part of their actual, real-life wealth. The 486 participants were once again placed in the legacy writing condition or a control condition, as in previous studies, before reading about online platforms on which they could pledge donations to specific charities. In a break with the hypothetical scenarios of previous studies, they were then given the opportunity to actually make a pledge (that is, promising to make a donation, rather than actually making it at the time). 

As expected, those who considered their own legacy were significantly more likely to make a pledge to a charity than those who did not. Indeed, 23% of those in the legacy condition chose to do so compared to just 15% of those in the control condition. Although pledges do not always translate to genuine donations, the results do suggest that thinking about one's legacy not only makes people consider how they could distribute their wealth differently, but also seems to change the way they behave beyond hypothetical scenarios. 

In a final study, participants were asked to donate a $1 bonus either to charity or to "their children's future". The results followed previous studies: participants forced to think of their legacy were more likely to allocate their money to charity. Even so, it has to be noted that participants were probably less concerned about where $1 was donated than they would be about thousands of dollars of their life savings. While this finding, and those of the previous studies, do illustrate that invoking one's legacy encourages charity, studies which put larger amounts of money on the table may better illustrate how powerful this effect truly is.

Despite these encouraging observations, it's important to remember that the behaviour of the super-wealthy might be meaningfully different to that of the general population samples used in this research. The fact that these participants merely pledged to charities, rather than definitively donated, also raises questions about whether or not they would actually follow through with the transaction. More tangible real-life investigations would likely shed additional light on this topic.

But, while psychological nudging will likely never be as effective at preventing monetary overaccumulation as appropriate taxation, these studies illustrate that it may at least go some way to boosting philanthropy. 

Read the study in full.