Which is more admired: Contributing time or money?

Suppose there are two very charitable brothers who are doctors: Bill and Jeff.

Both care deeply for the poor. Bill’s big city practices gives him a six-figure income. Bill donates $50,000 a year to Doctor’s Without Borders and, because of his donation, he saves 500 lives.

His brother, Jeff, works for Doctor’s Without Borders. He makes $23,000, sacrificing what could be a six-figure income, and every year saves 200 lives.

Bill’s donation saves more lives than Jeff’s, but which brother leads the more admirable life?

The Wall Street Journal, in a scientific survey, asked that question to its social media followers. The study found 92 percent of respondents believed Jeff was leading the more admirable life and 60 percent believed he helped more people than his brother Bill, even though Bill’s donations saved more lives.

According to a series of studies by Christopher Olivola, assistant professor of marketing at the Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business, found that contributing time was valued more than contributing money, even when a monetary contribution objectively did more good.

Called The Martyrdom Effect, personal sacrifice for charity is valued more than monetary donations.

Olivola’s experiments, published in The Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, also found that suffering for a cause increases altruism.
Case in point: The recent ALS Association’s ice bucket challenge where participants dumped ice water over their head and donated more than $115 million in an eight-week period. The fund-raiser was successful because it connected with people’s respect for suffering in the name of a good cause that reduced human suffering. However, Olivola also found that people weren’t as ready to endure something painful like ice water if the cause was unrelated to human suffering.