Dressed to impress: The effect of victim attire on helping behavior

Sergio W. Carvalho; Diogo Hildebrand; Sankar Sen

doi:10.1086/705034

Dressed to impress: The effect of victim attire on helping behavior

Sergio W. Carvalho, Diogo Hildebrand, Sankar Sen

Rowe School of Business

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10 Citas (Scopus)

Resumen

Charitable organizations often rely on pictures of victims to raise support for their causes. We examine the effect of donor perceptions of a novel aesthetic element of a victim’s physical appearance-his or her attire-on helping. In line with our theorizing, a field study, a survey, and an experiment together show that donor perceptions that a victim is well attired reduces helping by diminishing her perceived need. Moreover, we show that this negative effect of neat attire on helping behavior is weaker for more physically attractive victims than for their less attractive counterparts. These findings establish a victim’s attire as a key driver of donor support, point to attire-based changes in need perceptions as the underlying mechanism, and underscore the interactive role of multiple aesthetic cues in the prosocial domain.

Idioma original	English
Páginas (desde-hasta)	377-386
Número de páginas	10
Publicación	Journal of the Association for Consumer Research
Volumen	4
N.º	4
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1086/705034
Estado	Published - oct. 1 2019

Nota bibliográfica

Funding Information:
Sergio W. Carvalho (scarvalho@dal.ca) is the F. C. Manning Chair in Economics and Business and professor of marketing at Rowe School of Business, Dalhousie University, Canada. Diogo Hildebrand (diogo.hildebrand@baruch.cuny.edu) is assistant professor of marketing at Baruch College, City University of New York. Sankar Sen (sankar.sen@baruch.cuny.edu) is the Lawrence and Carol Zicklin Chair in Corporate Integrity and Governance at Baruch College, City University of New York, and Research Fellow, Sasin School of Management, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. Correspondence: Sergio W. Carvalho. The research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 the Association for Consumer Research. All rights reserved.

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

Applied Psychology
Economics and Econometrics
Marketing

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Dressed to impress: The effect of victim attire on helping behavior

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ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

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