Work of Two UCSD Social Scientists
to Benefit from Generosity Initiative Grants

Ioana Patringenaru | April 12, 2010

James Andreoni received a $250,000 grant to study the relationship between charitable donors and recipients.

The University of Notre Dame’s Science of Generosity Initiative has awarded $1.4 million to four research projects that will study the origins, manifestations and consequences of generosity. Two of the four inaugural grants involve UC San Diego social science professors. The winning projects were chosen from among 325 proposals by scholars in 32 countries and numerous disciplines.
 
James Andreoni , a behavioral economist at the University of California San Diego, was awarded $250,000 to study the relationship between charitable donors and recipients, with a focus on how empathy affects charitable donation. His project challenges economic approaches that tend to see generosity as a function of individual self-interest. He hypothesizes, instead, that generosity emerges from within social situations and must be understood as inherently social. Andreoni has done extensive work on the economics of charitable and philanthropic giving and is well-known for his research on the “warm-glow” effect that accompanies charitable giving.

Harvard sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis was awarded $396,447 to explore how generosity spreads beyond the donor/recipient relationship and creates “cascades” of generosity within social networks.  James Fowler, of the political science department at UCSD,  co-author with Christakis of “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives” (Little, Brown, and Company 2009), is co-investigator on the project. Fowler and Christakis build on the work of network scientists, social scientists and biologists who have begun to understand generosity as fundamental to the formation and operation of social networks.  

James Fowler is co-investigator on a project to explore how generosity spreads beyond the donor/recipient relationship and creates "cascades of generosity."

The other two projects focus on the causes of generosity within families and religions and are being headed by professors at Hebrew University and at Arizona State University.

"These four projects rose through a highly competitive evaluation process to the top of the list. They were the most scientifically rigorous research endeavors headed by top scholars, the findings of which hold the most promise for advancing our scientific understanding of generosity,” said Christian Smith, Notre Dame professor of sociology and director of the generosity initiative.

Current studies of generosity come from many different and often disconnected disciplines and focus on various terms, such as philanthropy, volunteerism and altruism.Established in 2009 with a $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Notre Dame’s Science of Generosity Initiative brings together the often disconnected and diverse approaches to generosity studies in order to study of generosity in all its forms.