The Cosmopolitan Blog

Don’t you hate it when emotional infomercials come on at the most inappropriate times? Imagine this. You’re sitting at home on a Sunday morning, quietly enjoying your breakfast. You switch on the TV, sit back on your couch, ready to spend a 1/2 hour or so just relaxing.

But instead, you see one of those B-list celebrities, with tears in their eyes, telling you how for just $1 a day, you can change the life of a child in Africa forever. Then you see these sad images of hungry little children with tears in their eyes (again!… i swear, there’s probably a special effects trick just for that) and, for even more effect, flies flying around their faces… and suddenly, your morning bagel just doesn’t taste so good no more…

I strongly believe in giving back. And i strongly believe that it’s important to encourage others to give back. BUT I HATE BEING EMOTIONALLY BLACKMAILED INTO DOING SO. I honestly find the Christian’s Children Fund the worst, because it pretends it knows me better than i know myself. It actually says, in the most condescending way possible

“we know you’ve thought about it, put it on a nice to-do list but somehow never got around to it, even though the phone’s right there and the call is free… maybe it kind of… gets lost in how busy you are… maybe you’re just taking your time… but these kids don’t have ’til the 12th of never. They need you today. And you’re not busy right this minute, so, why not now? “…

how invasive! how do you know how i reacted to your commercial, if i’m busy or not, whether or not i forgot my to-do list or whether i’m such a bad, bad person that i didn’t think it a priority???

So here’s a refreshing way to get people to donate: http://www.globalrichlist.com. First, because it’s fun, then because it tells you something about YOU, and it makes you feel good in the process, realizing that, however little you think your annual salary is, you’re actually in the top tier. So it doesn’t feel like the goal here is to make you give your money away, and it’s a fun tool that you want to just pass along to your friends.

Then, it puts it all in perspective, a bit further down the page by telling you some interesting facts like “for $73, you could buy yourself a cool new cell phone OR you could donate this money and pay for an entire new mobile health clinic to care for AIDS orphans in Uganda.”… see, it’s not playing on your emotions. It’s just putting $ amounts into perspective. And at the end of the day, whether you do, or whether you don’t give, you won’t feel bad.

In the old days, Pavlov used to test dog responses by the amount of electric shock he would pass through their bodies. Now we have dog training classes that teach the dog that if he does good, he gets a treat. This is the difference between negative and positive reinforcement. They both work, you’ll eventually get the results, but which one would you prefer using?