Formality and Charitable Giving

Organizing a fundraiser?  You’ll be interested in research conducted by Pfeiffer, Sundar, and Cao.  Their work indicates links between language used and the effectiveness of charitable appeals and it is possible that their findings can be extended to design’s effects on appeals experienced.  The Pfeiffer lead team report that “Charitable appeals generally address relatively serious topics. Since formal language style is more context congruent in communicating this seriousness, it should be more effective in expressing the emotional arousal or the effort of the communicator, which we expected to result in greater charitable support. . . . We find that formal language style (vs. colloquial) results in greater charitable support.”

Bruce Pfeiffer, Aparna Sundar, and Edita Cao.  “The Influence of Language Style (Formal Vs. Colloquial) on the Effectiveness of Charitable Appeals.”  Psychology and Marketing, in press, https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21729