History Commons^™

National Giving Campaigns In The United States: Entertainment, Empathy, And The National Peer Group, Christopher J. Einolf

Christopher J Einolf

This study presents a narrative history and quantitative analysis of national campaigns in the United States, and analyzes how successful campaigns provide entertainment, foster empathy, and develop a national peer group with norms and networks that encourage giving. Our historical survey found that charity telethons flourished in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but changes in tax regulations and competition from other networks and cable television led most of them to discontinue operations in the 1980’s and 1990’s. In recent years, internet and text messaging fundraising have become important, but benefit concerts continue to generate a significant percentage of total revenues. In …

Religion And Helping Others: The Role Of Values, Ideas, And Language, Christopher Einolf

Christopher J Einolf

This study used life narrative interview data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study to examine how religious values, ideas, and language motivate prosocial behaviors. Open coding of eighty-eight in-depth interviews revealed six themes: defining morality in religious terms, considering religion an important aspect of one’s identity, feeling that one’s life involves carrying out God’s mission, making an increased commitment to religion over time, drawing an explicit connection between religion and helping others, and, for Christian respondents, finding inspiration for helping in Jesus’ teaching, example, and sacrifice. Using ratings from independent coders, statistically significant relationships were found between …

Daily Spiritual Experiences And Prosocial Behavior, Christopher J. Einolf

Christopher J Einolf

This paper examines how the Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale (DSES) relates to range of prosocial behaviors, using a large, nationally representative U.S. data set. It finds that daily spiritual experiences are a statistically and substantively significant predictor of volunteering, charitable giving, and helping individuals one knows personally. Daily spiritual experiences better predict helping to distant others than to friends and family, indicating that they may motivate helping by fostering an extensive definition of one’s moral community. The relationship between the DSES and helping is not moderated by sympathy and is robust to the inclusion of most religiosity measures. However, the …

Who Volunteers? Constructing A Hybrid Theory, Susan M. Chambre, Christopher J. Einolf

Christopher J Einolf

This paper is an effort to initiate the development of a hybrid theory of volunteering. It describes three major theoretical perspectives: sociological theories which stress the importance of social context, social integration and social networks; prosocial and value orientations which emphasize the impact of individuals’ attitudes and beliefs regarding the importance of altruistic behavior and a sense of social responsibility; and resource theories that focus on the human capital and economic factors which both allow individuals to volunteer in meaningful ways and make them attractive to organizations.

Using the Midlife in the United States dataset, we operationalized the three theories …

The Timing Of Generative Concern: Evidence From A Longitudinal Survey, Christopher J. Einolf

Christopher J Einolf

Longitudinal data taken at a ten year interval from a large, nationally representative sample were used to examine whether generative concern, as measured by a reduced form of the Loyola Generativity Scale (LGS), changed through the life course. Men aged 25-30 in 1995 scored significantly higher on the LGS in 2005 (p < .05), and women aged 41-50 and 61-74 in 1995 experienced slight but statistically significant (p < .05) decreases. With these exceptions, mean levels of generative concern remained constant, suggesting that generative concern may be a stable personality trait, not associated with a particular life stage.

Gender Differences In The Correlates Of Volunteering And Charitable Giving, Christopher J. Einolf

Christopher J Einolf

Psychological research has found that women score higher on most measures of the traits, motivations, and values that predict helping others, and women are more likely to help family and friends. However, sex differences in the institutional helping behaviors of volunteering and charitable giving are small. This paper seeks to explain this apparent contradiction with the hypotheses that men have more resources and more social capital than women, which compensates for their lower level of motivation. The paper tests these hypotheses using data from the 1995 Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) survey. The data show partial support for these …

Explaining Abu Ghraib: A Review Essay, Christopher J. Einolf

Christopher J Einolf

Four books written by social scientists and published in 2007 are reviewed: The Trials of Abu Ghraib: An Expert Witness Account of Shame and Honor, by Stjepan Mestrovic; The Lucifer Effect, by Philip Zimbardo; Torture and the Twilight of Empire : From Algiers to Baghdad, by Marnia Lazreg; and Torture and Democracy, by Darius Rejali. Prior research on torture has left unsettled the question of the importance of training and direct orders as causes of torture, and the role of liberal democratic institutions in preventing torture. The four books demonstrate that the Abu Ghraib torturers did not act on their …