Beyond money: Nonmonetary prosociality across adulthood.

Abstract

Empirical evidence suggests that self-reported prosociality and donations increase with age. The majority of this research was conducted using monetary donations as outcome measures. However, on average older adults hold a significant advantage in financial and material assets compared to younger adults, effectively lowering the subjective cost of small monetary donations. Are older adults also more prosocial when donating a nonmonetary resource that is of equal or even higher value for them compared to younger age groups? A first study (N = 160, 20-74 years) combined data from self-report measures, affective responses, and hypothetical donation decisions to compute a single prosociality factor. Conceptually replicating findings from Hubbard, Harbaugh, Srivastava, Degras, and Mayr (2016) on monetary donations, results suggest that nonmonetary prosociality also increases with age. However, these differences depended on the domain of the donation. Data from two further behavioral studies (Study 2: N = 156, 18-89 years; Study 3: N = 342, 19-88 years) that were analyzed using Bayesian statistics provided evidence that older adults are not more prosocial than younger and middle-aged adults when donating a small amount of their time (in service of a donation to charity). In summary, the three studies suggest that older adults are not consistently more likely to behave prosocially than younger or middle-aged adults in nonmonetary domains. These findings point to the importance of moving research on prosociality and aging beyond financial donations and further explore the role of resources and perceived costs of prosociality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).