Negative Emotions and Pro-Social Persuasion: The Role of Anxiety Toward Death in Charities’ Campaigns Success

This paper is intended to enlighten one of the mechanisms which underlie the efficiency of shocking charities’ campaigns. Through the “death anxiety” concept, we especially focus on the relationship that the benefactor (and not the beneciary) has with his own death. Based on the Terror Management Theory, we develop a set of hypothesis which are tested by a quantitative experiment (n=600). The results show that death anxiety has not a conditional role but operates as an antecedent of the negative emotions elicited by the charitable appeal. Negative emotions then mediate the effect of death anxiety on charitable attitudes and intention to give. This particular perspective of the emotion-based prosocial persuasion is discussed.