Moral Obligations and Poverty Appeals

This paper looks at the differences between moral reasoning vs. moral intuition and its effects on individuals’ reaction to poverty appeals. With global poverty being one of the largest issues in the world, effective fundraising measures and poverty appeals are crucial to ensure its resolution. However, issues such as compassion fatigue, and identifiable victim theory reduce the affectivity of poverty appeals. This experimental qualitative study attempted to trigger participants’ response to poverty appeals through utilizing moral reasoning as opposed to moral intuition through utilizing verbal reasoning and reframing the situation. Sixty American University students participated in in-depth interviews adapted from a 2009 study by Peter Singer, responding to a poverty appeal and several situations requiring moral reasoning. The results differed from the conclusions made by the original quantitative study with the test conditions causing a change in response to the situations when compared to the control conditions and also lead to several suggestions towards creating more effective poverty appeals.