But I Do Everything Around Here!

Another factor that works against congregational giving is the “Responsibility Bias.” Due to this bias, we overestimate our contributions to a project or group relative to the contributions of other members. We have more information about our contributions than we do about those of others. We have more information about our own motives and problems. So we can generate far more detailed and gracious explanations for our own successes and failures. The Responsibility Bias is a sub-category of the “Positivity Bias.” We tend to present ourselves in the most positive light possible, especially when comparing ourselves to others.

In addition, the Responsibility Bias depends on what Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky labeled the “Availability Heuristic.” A “heuristic” is what we lay people would call a rule of thumb or a mental shortcut. It’s a way of thinking about things that requires less mental effort and energy to get to a satisfying solution. Tversky and Kahneman defined the Availability Heuristic “as the process of judging frequency by ‘the ease with which instances come to mind’.”[1] In other words, we estimate how often something happens by how easily we can access memories of that event. Our estimates will not be based on any real world statistics.

Every parent has to deal with the repercussions of the Availability Heuristic. I ask my teenager to do the dishes and clean up his room. The whining can be heard in a several-block radius. “But I do everything around here! Tell my sister to do it this time.” This may be pure adolescent sloth. It is more likely, however, that the Availability Heuristic is at work. We are far more aware of our own actions than we are the actions of others. It is easy to call to mind the many times I have made my bed (well, at least that one time), the times I have done the dishes (there was, after all, that one time last year when I did them), or vacuumed the living room (I have that one marked on the calendar on my phone). I can’t remember the last time my sister did anything like that!

And that’s the point. The Availability Heuristic has nothing to do with investigating the number of times I actually cleaned—or the number of times my sister did it in my place. This bias is rooted in what I can most easily call to memory. It makes a difference that I can also most easily remember that which best serves my interests and puts me in the best light in comparison to anyone else. Most important of all, since the heuristic is rooted in my memories and experiences, I really believe that what I’m saying is The Truth. And don’t try to tell me otherwise.

“The availability heuristic,” Kahneman writes, “substitutes one question for another: you wish to estimate the size of a category or the frequency of an event but you report an impression of the ease with which instances come to mind.”[2] If we were to poll congregation members about the percentage of their own contribution to the church budget and then to add up all those self-reports, the total would far exceed one hundred percent. 

How do I know this? Psychologists have studied, for example, the perceptions of relative contributions by spouses in a marriage. When the spouses were asked what percentage of the housework they did and the reports were totaled, the final outcome was enough perceived work for nearly two houses. We can expect that congregation members would demonstrate the same inflated sense of personal contribution.

Indeed every congregation has members who are sure they give more than anyone else. We know only about our own contributions, so it is natural that those contributions come most easily to mind. Every congregation has even more members who are sure they volunteer more than anyone else (and usually these folks do not hesitate to remind others of that fact). Again, this is not surprising since our actions are the ones that come most readily to our awareness. And even if they know better about their financial giving, they are convinced that their contributions in terms of time and influence are more important than the total contributions of others.

The Responsibility Bias becomes pernicious when it leads to controlling or even bullying behavior on the part of one or a few members of a group. Many congregations are managed and manipulated to some degree by members who are sure that they contribute more and are thus more important than anyone else. By the same token, many parishioners are sure that they do less than anyone else, even when this is clearly not the case. That power imbalances introduced by the Responsibility Bias make it difficult for congregations to focus on anything but themselves.

“The key to balancing our responsibility judgments,” writes Adam Grant, “is to focus our attention on what others have contributed.” Grant suggests a simple exercise for acknowledging and addressing the Responsibility Bias in a group. “All you need to do,” he continues, “is make a list of what your partner contributes before you estimate your own contribution.”[3]

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[1] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 129.

[2] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 130.

[3] Adam Grant, Give and Take, page 84.