© Sam Ward, USA TodayThe origins of giving probably are deep in the brain's circuitry, researchers say.
South Bend, Indiana - Generous impulses often are described in fundraising appeals, conversation and greeting cards as coming "from the heart."
In fact, the origins of giving probably are deep in the brain's circuitry.
Exactly how the complicated workings of the brain stimulate or suppress giving and how families, co-workers and values affect generosity remain a mystery despite years of study. The University of Notre Dame is leading a new research initiative that will merge economic, sociological, neurological and psychological studies to explain why some people give and some don't and to create a new academic field.
With a $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Notre Dame created the Science of Generosity Initiative in 2009. Research is underway here and at universities across the nation.
Project director Christian Smith, a Notre Dame sociology professor, hopes to unravel the physiological and behavioral mechanisms that make people generous - or not: Why do some people give blood? Why do some people go out of their way to help strangers?
The explanations, he says, will provide insights into "the cogs and wheels that form people's thinking and desires: feelings, relationships, social networks." Researchers are exploring the connection between parts of the brain that support parental caregiving and generosity and examining whether people who have strong connections with others are more likely to give.
Ultimately, Smith says, the research should help define how people can become more generous, leading to improved mental health, and help organizations that depend on generous people to tailor their messages.
Lisa Dietlin, a Chicago philanthropic adviser and author of the book Making a Difference: 365 Tips, Ideas and Stories to Change Your World, says science is a tool that can "accelerate giving, but it won't be a creator" of it. "I still think it's about people having relationships with people and sharing their stories about why their cause is so important," she says.
Feeling the 'warm glow'
There are some well-established theories about generosity. More than two decades ago, economist James Andreoni theorized that people who give experience internal satisfaction that he calls the "warm glow." Other researchers call it "helper's high" - a physical sensation that increases feelings of self-worth and makes people want to give again.
Smith says some facts about generosity are known:
- There are different kinds of giving. People give for strategic, altruistic, sentimental, impulsive, habitual or ideological reasons.
- People who are religious tend to give more.
- People who have more money don't necessarily donate more. The opposite is often true.
- Generosity is good for you: Senior citizens who volunteer live longer.
- Holiday giving often is strategic and motivated more by year-end tax deductions than the sentiments of the season.
- People who plan donations give more than those who don't.
- Guilt isn't a great motivator.
A link to parenting?
Researchers sponsored by Notre Dame's initiative are exploring how people's friendships, faiths, co-workers, spouses and parents affect their generosity and whether giving is contagious.
Omri Gillath is trying to learn whether "attachment security" - an internal sense we are worthy of love and people support us - is one cause of generosity.
Gillath, a social psychology professor at the University of Kansas, says attachment security is formed in childhood when we seek caregivers, starting with our mothers, to protect us. People who have been neglected or rejected by caregivers can develop attachment insecurity.
His research, funded by Notre Dame, measures electrical waves in the brain to map and analyze brain activity at the moment people are deciding whether or not to give - and how those patterns differ between people who have attachment security and those who are insecure.
Gillath wants to determine whether people with attachment security are more likely to be altruistic, volunteer, forgive and express gratitude and if enhancing security can increase such "pro-social' behavior. He's also trying to understand the brain processes behind the conduct.
"No one has found one gene for generosity," he says. "There is something very important in the actual decision-making process that we don't understand yet."
Stephanie Brown is exploring the links between altruism - giving with no expectation of reward - and brain circuits that support maternal feelings.
Brown, an associate professor of preventive medicine at State University of New York-Stony Brook who also teaches at the University of Michigan, is using a grant from Notre Dame to study whether generosity activates the part of the brain that supports maternal care, which is centered in the hypothalamus.
Brown uses brain scans to analyze differences in brain activity between mothers and women with no children as they watch videos of infants. Her subjects then work on tasks to help themselves or tasks that require them to help a partner, and she tracks their moods and stress levels.
Questions she hopes to answer: Do altruism and parenting responses activate similar brain networks? Is activation beneficial to "helpers" by alleviating stress? Is activation a function of the relationship between the helper and recipient? Does it matter if one or both are mothers?
"If we can establish that human generosity is at its core the maternal caregiving system," Brown says, "we can start to study how we can activate the system." If giving is proved to reduce stress, she says, "that would have profound implications for how we structure our society."
A hormone's impact
Paul Zak, founder of Claremont Graduate University's Center for Neuroeconomics Studies in Claremont, Calif., is not part of the Notre Dame project, but he is investigating his own theories.
His focus is on oxytocin, a hormone produced in the pituitary gland and the brain that is released during childbirth and as people bond. After studying oxytocin's ability to amplify feelings of trust, he began to explore its ability to spark generosity.
In one experiment, Zak and his team gave an oxytocin nasal spray to half his subjects and salt water to the rest, then had them play a game that required them to decide whether or not to give money away.
Oxytocin increased generosity by 80%, he says.
Parts of the brain, including the amygdala and subgenual cortex, have receptors that are activated by oxytocin, Zak says. The subgenual cortex makes people feel good when they are doing something positive such as giving, he says, and the amygdala controls feelings of safety and fear.
Finding generosity's roots won't lead to manipulation, he says. "We're not going to spray oxytocin in the air ... but increased happiness is a benefit to people who give, and we all want to be around generous people."
Scientists say that discovering the reasons people give and using those findings to generate more generosity is good for everyone.
"If I become somebody who is a giving person, that is how I self-identify," says Jessica Collett, a Notre Dame social psychologist. "It can influence everything I do."
People who are generous are "happier, healthier and doing better in life. There's something about learning how to get beyond one's self and helping other people that is good for the giver," Smith says. "And there is so much need in the world."
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter