Food cues, widespread resource availability, and kin relationships influence charitable giving

Decisions to donate to charity are influenced by a wide variety of factors. I hypothesized that four of these factors are ambient food odors, sex, donors' perceptions of the widespread availability of resources, and donors' perceptions of donor-recipient relatedness. The results of the first experiment (N = 60) revealed that participants were more willing to give to kin than to strangers. The results also indicated that food odors led women to be more willing than men to donate to charitable organizations in general. In Study 2 (N = 388), I actively manipulated participants' perceptions of the widespread availability of resources. The results suggested that perceptions of resource scarcity caused participants to hoard from strangers in need but not from kin in need.