Time Out

Understanding from the inside out.

by Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D.

Sex, Power and Generosity

The more powerful you are, the stingier you become.

Published on October 26, 2010 by Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. in Time Out

The more powerful people feel, the stingier they become, according to a recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

The experiment manipulated subjects' feeling of power by assigning them to the role of either boss or employee in a task, or by asking them to recall a time when they felt powerful or powerless, or by showing them advertisements designed to make them feel powerful or powerless.

After completing the power-related tasks, the subjects participated in an auction where they bid on a t-shirt and a mug. Some of each power group were told they were bidding on the objects for themselves. Others were asked to bid on
them for someone else, a person of their choosing.

The results were striking: high power people spent more on themselves than low power people. The opposite was true when they were bidding for someone else. When they had someone else in mind, low power people bid more than high power people.

If merely playing the role of someone powerful or powerless can influence "spending" judgments, imagine what impact real-life power differences make in the choice between generosity and selfishness.

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Researchers at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University did more than imagine. They were interested in whether gender made a difference in charitable giving. So they examined the donating patterns of about 8,000 American households, comparing those headed by single men or single women, whether divorced, widowed or never married. Their results were unequivocal. Women gave significantly more money to charity than men in nearly every income bracket, nearly twice as much in some cases. Women gave more often than men and spread out their giving to different charities, but they also give more in total dollars.

Now, we can only speculate about the reasons behind the gender generosity gap. Perhaps women are merely more altruistic or compassionate or nurturing than men. We know they are still significantly less powerful, and therefore, perhaps, still suffer less of the selfishness that power seems to confer.

An unexpected consequence of more women being in the workforce is their increased ability to give to charity. Will the gender gap in generosity continue as women become more powerful? We shall have to wait and see.