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Slacktivism?
Online causes might attract more clicks than commitments.
The article includes several studies that discovered ways to drive token support into real actions.
His group ran its first study shortly before a date when Canadians annually show support for veterans by wearing poppy flower pins. Participants consisted of 92 people who walked across a concourse on the University of British Columbia campus that leads to a cafeteria and shops. At the concourse entry, a researcher gave some participants a free poppy and asked them to pin it on their clothing. Others received an envelope containing a poppy inside. A third group got no poppies. At the end of the concourse, another researcher asked all volunteers if they wanted to put donations in a bin on behalf of Canada’s war veterans. On average, those who received their poppies in envelopes donated more than twice as much as those who were given poppies to display immediately on their coats. Those who got no poppies gave the least. Hidden token support, the exercise suggested, was the best foot in the door to making a substantial contribution.
People who provide token support without being observed don’t worry so much about social status as about contemplating how their personal values align with those of the cause, the researchers suspect.
The observable and hidden token support can be transferred online to public and private facebook groups. When people join a private facebook group for a social cause (i.e, their friends can’t see that they have joined), they are more likely to donate to the cause than those who joined a public group. Interestingly,
When other participants were encouraged to think about how their values aligned with those of the charities, comparably large majorities of both public and private joiners volunteered to stuff envelopes. People in public groups, it seemed, just needed some direction to forget about their public personas and embrace more active roles.