Altruistic financial donations are driven by predictable psychological and neurological rewards

Robin Bianchi, Florian Cova, Emma Tieffenbach. Is the warm glow actually warm? An experimental investigation into the nature and determinants of warm glow feelings. 2023. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v13i3.2565

Study 1 establishes that donations produce 'warm glow' feelings driven by distinct positive emotions and moral appraisals.

Orui J, Shiraiwa K, Inoue T, Ueda M, Ueno K, Naito Y, Ishii R. Neurophysiological effects of altruistically motivated craft activities in occupational therapy: A pilot study using frontal EEG and heart rate variability analysis.. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1177/15691861251319466

Study 2 demonstrates through EEG that altruistic activities increase approach motivation and desirable autonomic responses.

Bas LM, Roberts ID, Hutcherson CA, Tusche A. A neurocomputational account of the link between social perception and social action.. 2025. https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.92539

Study 3 details a neurocomputational account linking social perception and reward-related social choices during altruism.

Hu J, Moisa M, Ruff CC. Augmentation of frontoparietal gamma-band phase coupling enhances human altruistic behavior.. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003602

Study 7 proves that enhancing frontoparietal neural coherence directly increases human altruistic behavior.

Kim MJ, Sul S. How helping others helps us: neural mechanisms linking prosocial behavior to psychological and physical wellbeing.. 2026. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2026.1686801

Study 8 reviews the complex neural systems involving reward processing and empathy that link prosocial actions to wellbeing.