Do we get more generous as we age?

Anew study suggests that we become more generous towards strangers as we get older, even if our generosity is unlikely to be reciprocated.

To research further, a team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) looked at how social relationships with others could possibly influence how much older adults donate in comparison with younger adults.

The researchers recruited 78 adults for the study, with 39 deemed older with an average age of 70, and 39 deemed younger, averaging 23 years old. To measure generosity the team used a framework known as social discounting: it works on the principle that people treat those they are closer to better than those with whom they have a distant relationship or they don’t know at all.

The team found that both younger and older adults are equally generous to people they are close to such as family members or close friends.

However, the older participants were more generous to those they were not as close to, such as total strangers, and their level of generosity did not decrease with distance as quickly as that of the younger adults.

“Greater generosity was observed among senior citizens possibly because as people become older, their values shift away from purely personal interests to more enduring sources of meaning found in their communities,” explained study leader Assistant Professor Yu Rongjun.

Dr Narun Pornpattananangkul, the first author of the research paper, also added that, “In psychology, the motivation to contribute to the greater good is known as an ego-transcending motivation.”