Scrooge Effect

The Scrooge effect, named for the Dickens character transformed by a confrontation with mortality, is the pattern by which reminders of death increase generosity, charitable giving and other prosocial behavior, explained through terror management theory as a way people reaffirm cultural values and find meaning in the face of existential anxiety about dying. Tom Pyszczynski and colleagues tested the idea in a 1996 study finding that people interviewed near funeral homes rated charitable organizations more favorably than people interviewed away from such reminders, and a 2014 study by Tomasz Zaleskiewicz and colleagues used economic games to show that reminders of mortality increased how generously participants distributed resources to others. The effect is not unconditionally prosocial, however: research has also found that mortality reminders can increase favoritism toward a person's own cultural or social group specifically, and in some studies can heighten negative as well as positive reactions to others.