A five-item, seven-point uni-polar scale measuring a person's overall reaction to a charitable cause. The scale blends affective responses — feeling upset, sympathetic, and touched by the cause situation — with cognitive-moral evaluations of personal responsibility and the perceived appropriateness of making a donation. Items were developed for research on charitable giving and the distinction between identifiable and statistical victims, and the scale has been used across multiple published studies examining the emotional and deliberative processes underlying donation decisions. The instrument is most appropriate for contexts where respondents may plausibly feel emotionally affected by the cause described; its psychometric performance in emotionally neutral contexts is unknown.
Small, D.A., Loewenstein, G., & Slovic, P. (2007). Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 102(2), 143-153.
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