This is an ABC podcast.

Economists in particular find charitable giving the most baffling phenomenon in existence, right?

Because economists believe everything's like, you know, cost benefit.

So why would you possibly give away your money to help people you don't even know?

Around 80% of us donate some of our hard-earned money to charity, so clearly many of us think

it's a good idea to do so.

But what is it that actually motivates us to give, or demotivates us?

There's just such a range of reasons that people give, sometimes even just to get a tax rebate.

Do you know what I mean?

Is there an optimal way to give?

I don't know what the total giving in Australia is by individuals, but in the United States, it's over 300 billion per year,

and only 6% of that is going internationally.

And of that, a lot don't go to the most effective international organizations.

And have you ever heard of a rage donation?

We were like, okay, this is interesting,

because historically, anger has not been shown to be a sort of key factor in charitable giving.

You're listening to All in the Mind. I'm Sonakadar.

Today, the quirks of psychology that influence when we give to charity and when we don't.

So I had a meandering pathway, I suppose, to academia, quite different from a lot of people that are academics.

This is Dr Cassandra Chapman.

She's a researcher at the University of Queensland, and her interest in why we give to charity was seated in her own experience.

I originally started off working in international development, so working primarily in Latin America and also in

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