Does a Low-Cost Act of Support Produce Slacktivism or Commitment? Prosocial and Impression-Management Motives as Moderators

Lisa Selma Moussaoui; Jerome Blondé; Tiffanie Phung; Kim Marine Tschopp; Olivier Desrichard

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.783995

Does a Low-Cost Act of Support Produce Slacktivism or Commitment? Prosocial and Impression-Management Motives as Moderators

Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 4:13:783995. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.783995. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Lisa Selma Moussaoui¹, Jerome Blondé², Tiffanie Phung³, Kim Marine Tschopp³, Olivier Desrichard¹

Affiliations

¹ Health Psychology Research Group, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland.
² Social Influence Research Group, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland.
³ Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland.

Abstract

Increase or decrease in subsequent action following a low-cost act of support for a cause can be predicted from both commitment theory and the slacktivism effect. In this paper, we report on three studies that tested type of motivation (prosocial vs. impression management) as a moderator of the effect of an initial act of support [wearing a badge (S1) and writing a slogan (S2 and 3)] has on support for blood donation. Small-scale meta-analysis performed on data from the three studies shows that activating prosocial motivation generally leads to greater support for the cause after an initial act of support compared to the control condition, while the effect from impression-management motivation can either be negative or null.

Keywords: binding communication; blood donation; foot-in-the-door effect; impression management (IM); prosocial motivation; sequential request.