Individuals with low levels of trait empathy are hesitant when it comes to helping people in need. This makes it difficult for nonprofit organizations to gain their support for prosocial advertising campaigns. An experimental study among 214 Swiss students examines what message strategies nonprofit organizations should use to increase support from less empathic people. We investigate the effects of depicting daily life situations where people in need are happy versus sad (visual message strategies) and the effects of presenting statistical versus anecdotal evidence (verbal message strategies). The results show that less empathic individuals hold more favorable attitudes toward prosocial advertising campaigns when exposed to sad daily life images and anecdotal evidence. Moreover, attitudes mediate message effects on less empathic individuals' intentions to comply with a prosocial advocacy. Overall, the study suggests that nonprofit organizations should prefer sad over happy daily life images and anecdotal over statistical evidence in prosocial advertising campaigns.

中文翻译：

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提高亲社会广告活动的有效性：增加缺乏同理心的个人支持的信息策略

在帮助有需要的人时，缺乏特质同理心的人会犹豫不决。这使得非营利组织很难获得对亲社会广告活动的支持。一项针对 214 名瑞士学生的实验性研究调查了非营利组织应该使用哪些信息策略来增加缺乏同理心的人的支持。我们调查了描绘日常生活中需要帮助的人是快乐还是悲伤（视觉信息策略）的效果，以及呈现统计证据和轶事证据（口头信息策略）的效果。结果表明，当接触到悲伤的日常生活图像和轶事证据时，缺乏同理心的人对亲社会广告活动持更积极的态度。此外，态度调节信息对缺乏同理心的个体的影响。遵守亲社会倡导的意图。总体而言，该研究表明，在亲社会广告活动中，非营利组织应该更喜欢悲伤而不是快乐的日常生活图像，以及轶事而不是统计证据。