Which types of giving are associated with reduced mortality risk among older adults?

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Abstract

This study examined how different giving behaviors and prosocial traits earlier in life were related to later mortality risk among older adults, using the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study that has followed a randomly selected sample of U.S. high school graduates since 1957. Cox proportional hazards analyses were used to examine the unadjusted and adjusted associations between the giving-related variables at baseline and survival time during follow-up, controlling for a number of covariates (N = =3544). Giving behaviors included giving money to known others, charitable donations, giving support to friends, volunteering, and non-spousal caregiving. Prosocial traits were measured by how caring and friendly/warm the participants were in a typical week. Time-giving behaviors (i.e. caregiving, volunteering, giving support) and prosocial traits were associated with a lower mortality risk in older adults, but giving money was not. This study extends the literature by simultaneously examining a broad range of giving manifestations, which may help researchers to understand reasons for any differences in health benefits among different forms of giving. The results demonstrate that there is more than one prosocial path to longevity in later life and suggest more thoughtful and committed ways to engage in giving.

Introduction

Both prosocial behaviors and traits contribute to a multifaceted understanding of the health benefits of giving. Prosocial behaviors are defined as those that are intended to help others (Batson & Powell, 2003), and include various giving activities, such as volunteering, donating money, supporting friends, and caregiving for loved ones. Many studies have found a positive association between giving behaviors and health and well-being for givers (e.g. Brown et al., 2009; Brown, Nesse, Vinokur, & Smith, 2003; Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2014; Harris & Thoresen, 2005). Prosocial traits, such us empathy, compassion, or other-oriented concerns, are key motivators of prosocial behaviors (Konrath & Grynberg, 2013; Oveis, Horberg, & Keltner, 2010), including everyday behaviors like expressing warmth to others (Eisenberg & Miller, 1987) that might not be captured in measures of donating, volunteering, or caregiving. Unlike those more discrete prosocial behaviors, traits are less dependent on one's personal and social resources and are thus more likely to remain stable even in old age (Grühn, Rebucal, Diehl, Lumley, & Labouvie-Vief, 2008). Therefore, it is meaningful to consider the health implications of prosocial traits separately from those of prosocial behaviors, particularly among the elderly. Prior research has found that prosocial traits are also associated with positive physical and psychological outcomes (e.g., Ho, Konrath, Brown, & Swain, 2014; Kahana, Bhatta, Lovegreen, Kahana, & Midlarsky, 2013).

However, very few papers have examined the health associations of different giving behaviors and traits simultaneously within a single study. People often engage in more than one giving act. Does volunteering, for example, still significantly predict health outcomes when other giving behaviors are controlled for? Is it better or worse for one's health to volunteer for nonprofits, compared with giving money to family or charities, supporting friends, or caregiving for loved ones? Is simply seeing oneself as a giving person associated with better health outcomes? When considering next steps for research, or when designing low-cost interventions to improve the health of older adults, it would be helpful to know which prosocial activities are most influential.

Understanding if there are any differences in various forms of giving could also help unpack potential explanations for why giving should have any health benefit at all. One possible mechanism for the effects of giving on health is that the self-regulatory processes required to engage in giving buffer against the effects of one's own stressful experiences. Certain giving situations, such as volunteering, caregiving, or donating large amounts of money relative to one's own wealth require non-trivial amounts of resources and therefore raise self-focused concerns about the cost of engaging in these activities. People act on their desire to give to others in these ways likely must disengage from their self-focused concerns (Poulin, 2017), and in so doing, may also buffer themselves against the known effects of stress on health (Baum & Singer, 1987; Thoits, 2010). Prior work suggests that giving to others buffers the effects of stress on health and well-being (Inagaki & Eisenberger, 2016; Poulin, Brown, Dillard, & Smith, 2013; Raposa, Laws, & Ansell, 2016), and it could be that this stress-buffering effect is due to disengagement from self-focused concerns, driven by a commitment to giving to others. If so, however, some types of giving—especially those that are more sustained or costly—may be more beneficial than others.

To our knowledge, there are only two studies that have examined more than one giving manifestation simultaneously. One study examined both volunteering and charitable donations (Choi & Kim, 2011). They found that moderate volunteering (up to 10 h monthly) and any amount of charitable donations were associated with greater psychological well-being among older adults nine years later, and the effect of donations was larger than that of volunteering. The other study examined the effects of both prosocial behaviors (i.e. volunteering, informal helping) and altruistic attitudes (Kahana et al., 2013). They found that prosocial behaviors were associated with greater life satisfaction, and that both prosocial behaviors and attitudes predicted greater positive affect among older adults three year later. Neither of these studies focused on mortality. The current study extends this literature by simultaneously examining the associations of six giving manifestations on later mortality risk among older adults.

Section snippets

Participants

We used data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), which has followed a random sample of 10,317 Wisconsin high school graduates from 1957 to 2011 (six waves). A previous investigation (Konrath, Fuhrel-Forbis, Lou, & Brown, 2012) examined the relationship between volunteering and mortality risk using the WLS, but the present research extends that work by including other types of giving, using updated mortality data, and using a different analytical method. The 2004 wave was our baseline

Results

Prosocial behaviors were prevalent among the sample of older adults. In the baseline survey, 44% reported giving $1000 or more to family and friends, 64% made charitable donations of $500 or more, 58% gave support to friends, 59% volunteered, and 33% gave care to someone other than their spouse. Prosocial traits were also salient. On average, respondents rated themselves highly on prosocial traits (M = =0.78 on a scale of 0 to 1, SD = 0.20). Moreover, there was clear evidence for overlapping

Discussion

Our study contributes to the literature by examining a broad range of giving-related variables both separately and simultaneously. First, support giving, volunteering, and caregiving were all significantly associated with lower mortality risk among our sample of older adults during the follow-up, even when controlling for all the covariates and the potential overlaps among giving behaviors. The results provide additional evidence for previous research on the associations of these behaviors with

Conclusion

Overall, this study remains the most comprehensive attempt to address the question of which types of giving are associated with mortality risk. Conceptualizing these results in terms of behaviors that do or do not represent sustained commitment to giving, and thus elicit disengagement from self-focused concerns, may help explain why there should be any differences in health benefits among different types of giving. Practically, the results demonstrate that there is more than one prosocial path

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    Sara Konrath was funded by the John Templeton Foundation while working on this project (grants #47993 and 57942).

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