{"id":20160,"date":"2020-03-31T23:14:39","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T23:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=20160"},"modified":"2020-04-01T19:47:23","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T19:47:23","slug":"paying-all-blood-donors-might-not-be-worth-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/paying-all-blood-donors-might-not-be-worth-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Paying all blood donors might not be worth it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gretchen Chapman<\/a>, Carnegie Mellon University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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The Abstract features interesting research and the people behind it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Gretchen Chapman is a decision scientist<\/a> who explores what makes it more likely that people will get vaccinated or engage in other behaviors that are good for public health. We asked her about her research about blood donation and generosity.<\/em><\/p>\n

What did you want to figure out?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gretchen Chapman:<\/strong> Donated blood can save the lives of people who need transfusions, but blood donation centers frequently face shortages<\/a>. The easiest way to fix this bottleneck is to increase the number of Americans who give blood from about 6.8 million per year<\/a> or encourage those who are willing and able do so<\/a> to give blood more often.<\/p>\n

Paying blood donors<\/a> might seem like a straightforward way to encourage people to do more of it. However, it\u2019s an unusual<\/a> although technically legal practice in the United States. Blood donors are far more likely to get tote bags or bumper stickers<\/a> as tokens of appreciation.<\/p>\n

I believe that the current system makes sense. That\u2019s because behavioral scientists<\/a> find that many people do generous things, whether it\u2019s volunteering at an animal shelter or giving hundreds of dollars to their alma mater, based both on a desire to help others<\/a> and their hankering for whatever they think they might get<\/a> in return. There\u2019s a third motive: appearing generous to others<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What about plasma?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chapman:<\/strong> It takes more time to donate plasma<\/a>, the pale yellowish liquid that makes up more than half of blood, which means plasma donation requires more effort. As a result, it\u2019s common for Americans<\/a> to get paid for donating plasma<\/a> \u2013 especially low-income people<\/a>. Not only is there no plasma shortage, the U.S. is a leading exporter<\/a> of it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s logic behind this distinction. Just like you\u2019d be happy to help your neighbor move a sofa into a truck as a favor, and might be put off if they offered a little cash, you would probably not agree to move the entire contents of the neighbor\u2019s house without being paid for your labor.<\/p>\n

How did you test whether paying blood donors matters?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chapman:<\/strong> In a study I conducted with social psychologist Jeffrey DeWitt<\/a>, 4,528 members of Rutgers University\u2019s faculty, staff and students were offered a US$10 gift card for taking part in a blood drive on campus. The email inviting them to give blood described the gift card in one of four ways.<\/p>\n

Half the participants were told the gift cards were intended to thank them for donating blood. The other half heard that the gift card was meant to promote American Heart Month<\/a>, which occurs every February. We expected the Heart Month rationale to make people feel that they were really donating their blood to help people and just happened to be getting a gift card incidentally because of the timing. In addition, only half of both groups were told they would wear conspicuous heart-themed bandages and arm wraps to spread awareness of the importance of giving blood.<\/p>\n

Because everyone was offered the same sum, we didn\u2019t compare groups that did versus didn\u2019t get offered money. Instead, we tested how the description of that $10 affected everyone\u2019s decision to donate or not, as well as the power of the expectation that others will know you\u2019ve donated.<\/p>\n

We predicted that descriptions would work best when they emphasized that a donor\u2019s generosity would be publicly observable and also let donors feel generous rather than in it for the money.<\/p>\n

What did you find?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chapman:<\/strong> We predicted that the most effective message would be the one that makes donors feel that others can see that they\u2019ve done a good deed in combination with implying that the gift card is not payment for donation but rather a celebration of American Heart Month.<\/p>\n

And it was. We found that 2.51% of the people who knew they would leave the blood drive with blood-donor branding on their arms and were given the Heart Month rationale for the $10 gift card took part.<\/p>\n

However, we also found that nearly as large a share \u2013 2.4% \u2013 of the people in the group that simply heard that they\u2019d get a $10 gift card if they gave blood took part as well. That came as a surprise but we believed a good explanation for this is that if people don\u2019t think anyone will notice, they are more likely to give blood when they expect to get paid.<\/p>\n

The other two groups were much less likely to give blood. Only 1.65% of the people who were given the Heart Month rationale for the gift cards without any mention of the arm wraps donated. And even fewer \u2013 just 1.33% \u2013 of the people who didn\u2019t hear about the Heart Month rationale but did know to expect the branding-covered arm wraps gave blood.<\/p>\n

What are the practical implications?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chapman:<\/strong> First, our findings \u2013 which we plan to publish later this year in an academic journal \u2013 are that paying people to donate blood might not be worth it even if monetary incentives are creating a plasma surplus. Second, if anyone does want to pay people to give blood anyway, they should probably do it in a way that allows donors to project their generous motives.<\/p>\n

Although our results are a bit complex, they\u2019re consistent with earlier findings<\/a> by other researchers who found that monetary incentives work best when they give the impression that others will view blood donors as generous instead of just in it for the money.<\/p>\n

[Deep knowledge, daily.<\/em> Sign up for The Conversation\u2019s newsletter<\/a>.]\"The<\/p>\n

Gretchen Chapman<\/a>, Professor of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gretchen Chapman, Carnegie Mellon University The Abstract features interesting research and the people behind it. Gretchen Chapman is a decision scientist who explores what makes it more likely that people will get vaccinated or engage in other behaviors that are good for public health. We asked her about her research about blood donation and generosity. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":20161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[42],"tags":[5257,542,7850,7853,1725,7290,3050,7851,7854,7852,228,7743],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20160"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20164,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20160\/revisions\/20164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}