Local Norms Reframe the Socio-Affective Drivers of Charitable Giving

Despite the widely recognized impact of social norms on prosocial behavior, little is known about how local norm information modulates the socio-affective traits and states that drive charitable giving. Here, across two experiments, we assessed how information about local norms alters the influences of self-interest and self-blame on decisions to donate time and effort to raise money for real charities. In Study 1 (N = 210), revealing that previous participants overwhelmingly chose anonymous over public donations reversed the positive effect of approval-driven compassion on the overall likelihood of donating. In Study 2 (N = 240), experimentally induced guilt arising from poor performance in an unrelated social task increased the likelihood of subsequent charitable giving; however, learning that one’s performance fell below the local norm eliminated this prosocial effect, consistent with the dominant emotion shifting from guilt to shame. Together, the findings illustrate how local social norms can dynamically reframe the motivational and affective processes that drive charitable behavior.