Inspire me to donate: The use of strength emotion in donation appeals

Abstract Previous research has shown that the use of negative emotions such as sadness in donation appeals can make people empathetic towards the donation target, increasing their tendency to donate (the “empathy-helping” hypothesis). In this research we propose an “inspiration-helping” hypothesis, and find that the positive emotion of strength can inspire people to donate. We show that combining the positive emotion of strength and the negative emotion of sadness is more effective as a means of persuading people to donate than the sadness-dominating or the strength-dominating emotion.