For purposes of contrast, Professor List and his team then increased the attractiveness of the woman who asked for the money. The more attractive women (a “one standard deviation increase in attractiveness,” in statistical terms) had as big a positive impact on giving — in the range of 50 to 100 percent — as moving from the least successful fund-raising method to the most successful.
This is just one of the many things found by John List’s research in his pioneering study of the economics of charity, discussed in an NYTimes column today.I talked about other stuff List has done here.
