Patricia Snell Herzog

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis | IUPUI · Lilly Family School of Philanthropy

This paper provides a meta-analysis of the intersection of (a) religiosity and spirituality with (b) generosity, philanthropy, nonprofits, and prosociality. The study is informed by three informational sources, chronologically: (1) informational interviews with scholars and practitioners based within and studying regions outside of the U.S. and Wes...

This paper seeks to advance the global study of religiosity and spirituality by conducting a meta-analysis of major approaches in the field. While the field, and thus the collected publications, are dominated by Western approaches, particular attention is paid in this analysis to publications from geographies that are not from the United States or...

This paper advances the global study of religiosity by conducting a systematic review of the geographic scope, religious traditions, levels of analysis, and topics investigated within contemporary scientific studies of religion, paying particular attention to intersections with generosity. The analysis builds upon a meta-analysis of 30 years of sci...

Since 2010, scholars have made major contributions to cross-cultural research, especially regarding similarities and differences across world regions and countries in people’s values, beliefs, and morality. This paper accumulates and analyzes extant multi-national and quantitative studies of these facets of global culture. The paper begins with a s...

Citizenry decision-making relies on data for informed actions, and official statistics provide many of the relevant data needed for these decisions. However, the wide, distributed, and diverse datasets available from official statistics remain hard to access, scrutinise and manipulate, especially for non-experts. As a result, the complexities invol...

This book aids entering college students—and the people who support college students—in navigating college successfully. In an environment of information overload, where bad advice abounds, this book offers readers practical tips and guidance. The up-to-date recommendations in this book are based upon real students, sound social science research, a...

Social scientists since the original Chicago School researchers find that neighborhoods and other geographic areas exert effects on residents, both while they live in those areas and even long afterward. The context effects are net of the individuals composing them, meaning there are cumulative effects that cannot be explained by individual‐level c...

The introduction defines generosity and links it to the approaches and vocabularies of various disciplines. The need for the book is reviewed, including the scholarly contributions to understanding learning to give, increasing knowledge through studying data gleaned from multiple methods, gaining insights into the consequences of generous behavior,...

This chapter explains how different disciplines illuminate various aspects of the same phenomenon. The Science of Generosity Initiative projects employ multiple methods to explore generous activities and their correlates through a myriad of lenses. This chapter integrates their findings toward describing how to pursue interdisciplinarity, beginning...

The conclusion is co-authored with a graduate student who also has significant experience as a practitioner, and summarizes the central themes of the book and their relevance for comprehending the full sphere of generous activities, from causes through to consequences. The conclusion draws out the implications of these studies for emerging scholars...

This chapter focuses on what causes people to be generous, how people learn to give, and what factors support them in carrying out generous actions. Giving takes effort that can be inhibited by the busyness of everyday life. To be able to give, people require access to at least some economic, social, or psychological resources, and they must see th...

The appendix to the book is for readers who are interested in how to study generosity, especially for those readers who want to move beyond consuming the information produced by these studies into launching careers as producers of research on generosity. The appendix begins by describing a research roadmap that highlights key steps in the process o...

This chapter discusses the consequences of generosity for individual givers, for interpersonal relationships, for organizations, networks, communities, and institutions, and for society, more generally, in the sphere of culture, religion, politics, and economics. For givers and receivers, some of these consequences play out in an ongoing, reciproca...

Using findings from the Science of Generosity Initiative and other studies, this chapter details the various manifestations of generosity, such as giving money, possessions, time, attention, aid, encouragement, and emotional availability. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between philanthropy and generosity. Other important manifesta...

This book advances understanding of the manifestations, causes, and consequences of generosity. Synthesizing the findings of the 14 research projects conducted by the Science of Generosity Initiative and offering an appendix of methods for studying generosity, this comprehensive account integrates insights from disparate disciplines to facilitate a...

This special issue addresses the science and imagination of living generously. Generosity is investigated from multiple disciplinary approaches, across the seven articles included in the issue. The first article engages an economic approach to address heterogeneity and generosity for adult Americans, analyzing charitable giving before and after the...

Social scientists since the original Chicago School researchers find that neighborhoods and other geographic areas exert effects on residents, while people live in those areas and even long afterward. The context effects are net of the individuals composing them, meaning there are cumulative effects that cannot be explained by individual-level char...

Does interacting with social science data in early adulthood promote generosity? To investigate this question from a life course development perspective, two distinct samples were drawn for a survey with an embedded experimental design. The first sample is of emerging adult college students (n = 30, median age = 20 years). The second sample is of y...

A social fact consists of collective thoughts and shared expectations that influence individual actions. Examples of social facts include social roles, norms, laws, values, beliefs, rituals, and customs. Violating social facts confirms their existence because people who act against social facts are typically sanctioned. Sociology is one of the prim...

This study integrates developmental and cultural approaches to student development and finds that millennial college students are responsive to moral formation. A particular challenge to prosociality among contemporary generations is growing up within a cultural context that aggrandizes a self-focus during emerging adulthood. Businesses are increas...

The impetus for this volume began years ago...I have been fortunate to work with hundreds of emerging adults who have helped to further inform my thinking on this topic. This book is dedicated to these outstanding students, truly as they are my greatest teachers. Anyone who spends enough time listening to young people should know just how tremendou...

This paper challenges the “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) category as a methodological artifact caused by interacting two closed-ended survey items into binary combinations. Employing a theoretically rich approach, this study maps the multiple ways in which the religious and the spiritual combine for emerging adults. Results indicate that most...

A social fact consists of collective thoughts and shared expectations that influence individual actions. Examples of social facts include social roles, norms, laws, values, beliefs, rituals, and customs. Violating social facts confirms their existence because people who act against social facts are typically sanctioned. Sociology is one of the prim...

This book introduces some of the analytical approaches that the social sciences bring to the study of philanthropy. Readings introduce the role of philanthropy in promoting social justice and civil society; intersections of philanthropy with important issues in the social sciences, such as race, class, gender, religion, and youth; organizational th...

Philanthropy is a practice of donating to foundations or nonprofit organizations for the purposes of bettering the collective good. Because philanthropic gifts often come in the form of monetary donations and are typically given to support charitable causes, philanthropy can be thought of as synonymous with charitable giving. However, these terms o...

This study examines social networks and financial giving to charitable or religious causes. Conventional social capital measures of general social trust and size of social network are studied as predictors of charitable giving. To these traditional measures, we add an examination of particular network aspects of giving: ego giving in relation to ne...

This volume includes eight studies of faith and giving for youth and emerging adults.[...]

This is a book about young people—youth and emerging adults.[...]

This paper investigates the research question: How do religious youth learn to give? While it is likely that youth learn religious financial giving from a variety of different sources, this investigation focuses primarily on how parents teach giving to their children. Supplementary data are also analyzed on the frequency in which youth hear extra-f...

The study evaluates a pilot course designed to respond to findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) and similar findings reporting changes in U.S. life course development and religious participation through an intervention based on sociological theories of morality. The purpose of the study is to investigate the impacts of a bus...

In chapter 4 social psychological approaches to investigating the why question of American generosity are explored. Theoretical background consists of Mead-inspired symbolic interactionism, Cooley-inspired “looking glass self,” theories of action, Durkheim-inspired social solidarity, Marx-inspired collective consciousness, and Weber-inspired social...

Chapter 1 answers the how much question of American generosity and describes participation rates in nine different forms of generous behaviors. Drawing on a wealth of social science literature ranging from Alexis de Tocqueville to Robert Putnam, this chapter finds somewhat low levels of voluntary participation in the United States today. Snapshots...

To put generosity within the context of real social lives, twelve case studies are presented that illustrate the broader quantitative themes presented throughout the book. These qualitative cases help explain real-life processes involved in giving behaviors and guide understanding of the broader quantitative patterns presented in the book. Understa...

Chapter 5 presents a sociorelational approach to explaining generosity behaviors. Situated within broader theories of industrialization, modernity, social differentiation, community, and association, the analysis applies a Simmelian-inspired theory of webs of affiliations. Generous self-identity is explored in relation to alignment with spouse in g...

In chapter 2, the who and where questions of American generosity are studied in a Blau-inspired social differentiation analysis. Rates of participation in the “Big 3”generosity forms—financial giving, volunteering, and political action—are investigated with the social status characteristics: age, gender, racial/ethnic identification, marital status...

The conclusion summarizes the central contributions of the book and offers a Maslow-inspired theory of “circles of generosity” that represent meaningful bundles of giving ability, intended targets, and motivations that ripple outward in their societal impacts. These include self-sufficiency generosity, parental-familial generosity, community-religi...

The how question of American generosity is investigated in chapter 3. An innovative analytical method, called fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, is used to construct Weberian-inspired ideal types along with an atypical group that does not fit into one of these types. The types show how processes of giving group together into discernible co...

This anthology explores what it means to be a twenty-something in contemporary society. The readings examine the relatively newly acknowledged stage of life known as emerging adulthood through a sociological lens, which enables student-readers to understand their personal challenges within the context of public issues. An interdisciplinary text, th...

This in-depth case study investigates the religious, ethnic, and social conflicts that exist between two groups co-located in the same congregation. A diocesan cost-based merger brought together two religio-ethnic communities that were formerly housed in separate parishes. One group already had their congregation in the existing building and is mos...

How and why does religious socialization contribute to the reproduction of social inequality? An in-depth case study of religious youth programming provides an empirical investigation of the way that a primary institution that many youth encounter may serve to legitimate the broader field of social stratification. Despite the apparent lack of direc...

This paper provides an in-depth, qualitative analysis of two Christian youth groups. Researchers conducted personal interviews with participating youth and their youth ministers and collected extensive field notes on participant observations of youth group events. Findings indicate the presence of youth group cliques with clear delineations about w...

Life for emerging adults is vastly different today than it was for their counterparts even a generation ago. Young people are waiting longer to marry, to have children, and to choose a career direction. As a result, they enjoy more freedom, opportunities, and personal growth than ever before. But the transition to adulthood is also more complex, di...

Religious congregations are hypothesized to be a community organization affected by contextual inequalities. Survey and interview data are analyzed to investigate the type and prevalence of youth programming in a geographic area. Rather than drawing a sample of religious congregations in the area, the telephone survey was conducted with every congr...

This paper explores how and why religious adherents participate in self-sacrificing behaviors, such as religious giving. Though previous literature shows that monetary giving can be conceptualized as a way to participate in the sacred, questions remain about how this sacralization process occurs and how it may differ across congregational contexts....

Researchers consistently find that educational and familial settings unintentionally reproduce socioeconomic status (SES) via distinct socialization patterns in their community contexts. Yet there are surprisingly few studies examining this pattern as related to religious settings. This study extends the social reproduction literature by examining...

This paper extends previous findings on religion and generosity by developing and assessing a conceptual typology of potential motivations for and obstacles to religious giving. Specifically, we examine “socialized giving,” “need giving,” “normative giving,” and “guilt giving” as potential motivators, and “wealth insecurity,” “giving illiteracy,” a...

What is sociological about spatial context? This is a question which the original founders of sociology attempted to answer in multiple ways and which many prominent social thinkers continue to ponder. However, much of contemporary sociological empirical work is either implicitly aspatial or lacks adequate attention to the spatial patterning presen...

Parent involvement within schools can lead toward measurable school improvement outcomes. However, many struggling schools do not see their parents as being regularly involved in schools. As discussed by Greene and Long in the previous chapter, common sense notions often pit low-income and minority parents as particularly uninterested or unengaged...

Emile Durkheim is often thought of, at least within many North American interpretations, as closely associated with ‘variables sociology,’ a tradition commonly understood to be in opposition to the Chicago school of sociology, which is commonly thought of as more qualitatively focused. Upon closer examination, it is apparent that Durkheim and the C...

Political engagement among U.S. emerging adults aged 18 to 24 was examined via quantitative and qualitative data. The data analyzed are from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). The NSYR consists of three waves of a nationally representative (a) telephone survey (Wave 1 n = 4,161), (b) in-person interviews (Wave 3 n = 230) collected wit...

How important is religion for young people in America today? What are the major influences on their developing spiritual lives? How do religious beliefs and practices change as young people enter into adulthood? This book explores these questions and many others as it tells the definitive story of the religious and spiritual lives of emerging adult...

Political engagement among U.S. emerging adults aged 18 to 24 was examined via quantitative and qualitative data. The data analyzed are from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). The NSYR consists of three waves of a nationally representative (a) telephone survey (Wave 1 n = 4,161), (b) in-person interviews (Wave 3 n = 230) collected wit...

Though many congregations structure youth ministry programs to foster desired religious and social outcomes, questions remain regarding whether participation in religious-based youth programs is beneficial for the youth involved. Studies show that religion typically results in positive life outcomes for youth, but less is known about the causal mec...

This paper provides a descriptive analysis of congregationally-based youth programs in one geographically specified area in northern Indiana. A response rate of 98.9 percent (N=269) from congregations to a survey and 42 additional in-person interviews with youth ministers were conducted to compile data on the characteristics of congregations, youth...

This paper examines the implementation of a participatory action research study as a parent involvement strategy in one urban, Colorado middle school thought to have low parental involvement. Parent leaders from the middle school community participated in the data collection, analysis, and dissemination as ‘promotora researchers.’ These parent prom...

This chapter examines various data sources on charitable giving in the United States to establish six crucial facts about the giving of American Christians. These are that at least one out of five American Christians - twenty percent of all American Christians - gives literally nothing to church, para-church, or nonreligious charities; the vast maj...

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of the primary goal of this book, which is to better understand and explain American Christians' lack of generosity, from a sociological perspective. It then assesses the claim that people, including Christians, are often selfish and greedy. The chapter then explains how the approach it used...

This chapter considers nine hypotheses potentially explaining the low levels of financial giving by American Christians. It argues that Most American Christians do not give generously for a combination of reasons. The first is that many have not seriously confronted and grappled with the theological and moral teachings of their traditions to give g...

This book shows that few American Christians donate generously to religious and charitable causes - a parsimony that seriously undermines the work of churches and ministries. Far from the ten percent of one's income that tithing requires, American Christians' financial giving typically amounts, by some measures, to less than one percent of annual e...

Passing the Plate shows that few American Christians donate generously to religious and charitable causes -- a parsimony that seriously undermines the work of churches and ministries. Far from the 10 percent of one's income that tithing requires, American Christians' financial giving typically amounts, by some measures, to less than one percent of...

This chapter focuses on how American Christians can make a difference through generous financial giving. It is estimated that if committed Christians in the United States gave ten percent of their after-tax income - fully but no more than ten percent - that would provide an extra $46 billion per year of resources with which to fund needs and priori...

This concluding chapter begins with a synthesis of the discussions in the previous chapters. It then offers a set of informed conjectures, based on the findings of the previous chapters, about changes that leaders concerned about generous financial giving might consider implementing in ways appropriate to their situations. The lessons provided by t...

This chapter examines the results of a focused mental experiment wherein a nationally representative sample of American Christians was asked to ponder their response to the idea of their churches raising expectations on the financial giving of Christians. The idea in doing this is that having ordinary Christians all over the United States run this...

This chapter describes a survey of Christian pastors and church members about money and stewardship in order to understand the thoughts, feelings, experiences, and meanings of American Christians that might affect their financial giving behaviors. In-depth, face to face interviews were conducted with twenty-six Christian church pastors and fifty-on...