Ashleigh McCoy Ingram English 1102 1 April 2014 Annotated Bibliography Brooks, Arthur C.

"Religious Faith and Charitable Giving." Religious Faith and Charitable Giving | Hoover Institution. Leland Stanford Junior University, 1 Oct. 2003. Web. 01 Apr. 2014. <http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6577>. Arthur C Brooks gains his credibility through his masters at Florida Atlantic University and his doctorate at Pardee RAND. He refers to a survey taken through the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research measuring religious and secular citizens giving and volunteering behaviors over the course of a year. From the data, Brooks notes that the differences are dramatic. Religious people are 25 percent more likely to donate money than secularists and 23 percent more likely to volunteer. Brooks notes that in his findings secularists are less likely to give to religiously affiliated charities because they are less interested in the receivers religious outcome. According to the National Opinion Research Centers 1996 General Social Survey, secularists support greater public government spending. My thoughts on this are divided. If I was not religious, personally I would just look for secular charities and not depend on the government to help out the poor. Im sure that if more secular charities were advertised and brought to light the rate at which secularists give would increase. Brooks findings have continued to help shape my views even further.

Buchanan, Kathryn E., and Anat Bardi. "Acts Of Kindness And Acts Of Novelty Affect Life Satisfaction." Journal Of Social Psychology 150.3 (2010): 235-237. Business Source Complete. Web. 13 Feb. 2014. Kathryn Buchanan and Anat Bardi focused on establishing the effects of carrying out acts of kindness and novelty on life satisfaction. Anat Bardi, a senior lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London, and Kathryn Buchanan, a doctoral student at the university, were the researchers and authors of this publication. Bardi, being the primary author, has 24 psychology-related publications that all surround her studies on human values. They used 86 participants who were given kind tasks to perform before their life satisfaction was measured. These participants were either given kind acts, new acts, or no acts. Participants performed acts every day for ten days and Bardi and Buchanan used the 5-item Satisfaction with Life Scale to record life satisfaction before and after the acts were performed. This study shows that life satisfaction did increase, and integrating kind and new acts as a feature of happiness-enhancing interventions. I chose this article because this strongly correlates in my belief that showing kindness to others is extremely rewarding and happiness is achieved when others around you are happy. This

statistically supports my beliefs and logically would benefit my research on kindness and the effects it can have. Campbell, David E., and Robert Putnam."It's Social Ties -- Not Religion -- That Makes The Faithful Give To Charity." Time.Com (2013): 1. Academic Search Complete. Web. 31 Mar. 2014. David Campbell is a current professor at Notre Dame University in the department of political science. He has acquired his PhD and Masters from Harvard University. In this particular article Campbell discusses why Americans do charity and related it to religion. This article has opened up a lot of possibilities for angles that my project could take. I have not considered the religious aspect of charity and Im eager to explore this ideology more. Campbell brings to light that in the last 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in those who do not claim an affiliation. Today, 20 percent of Americans say they do not group themselves with a specific religion. According to Campbell this increase of individuals has caused concern on whether charitable giving will decrease. Campbell and Robert Putnam (a worldrenowned political scientist and Campbells professor at Harvard at the time) looked into the looming question. They found a study that was done by Jumpstart and the Indiana University Lil Family School of Philanthropy that conducted a national survey that found that three-quarters of all household charitable giving goes to organizations with religious ties; these organizations include Samaritans Feet, Salvation Army, etc. In the duos book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us they explain how the most religious Americans are among the most charitable. In an effort to explain why religious beliefs foster a sense of charity Campbell and Putnam found that the secret ingredient for charitable giving is social networking formed within religious congregations. In simpler terms, The more friends someone has within a religious congregation, the more likely they are to give time or money to charitable causes. This article has helped to inform me on one of the many arguments about charity dealing with the religious aspect. I plan to continue to form my own opinion dealing with religion as my research continues. Fagan, Joanne. "Why Do You Really Give to Charity? Why Donate?" Evas Village RSS. Evas Village, n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2014. < />. Charity-coordinator and blogger Joanne Fagan posted an article she wrote on her site about social psychologists ideology on why people do charity and donate. Fagan lists two reasons for why social psychologists think people help each other. First, we see the benefit we gain from helping people as accruing to others. They call this public benefit because the public benefits from the charity work. Second, we help others because we see the benefit as our own; social psychologists call this private benefit. Fagan states that private benefit accounts for a high majority of the charity work U.S. citizens do. Researched have identified multiple ways that people benefit privately from giving to charity. Tangible benefits can include prestige in terms of plaques or academic buildings named after them. Nontangible benefits include the majority of private benefits; These non-tangible benefits include a certain glow from mental and physical benefits ranging from reduced stressed and depressing to a greater sense of life satisfaction. Towards to conclusion of the article Fagan refers to a study done by Dr. Deborah Small, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, which suggests that if you start

over-thinking how you can give you tend to give less. Small is basically saying that philanthropic acts are more like prayers and not calculations. Harris, Dan. "Young Americans Losing Their Religion." ABC News. ABC News Network, 06 May 2009. Web. 03 Apr. 2014. <http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7513343&page=1>. Dan Harris, a reporter for ABC news, speaks with Robert Putnam about young Americans who are losing their religion. Putnam is a Harvard professor who has shown up multiple times in my research regarding the religious aspect of charity. Putnam says that historically the percentage of non-affiliates, or nones as he calls them, have been around 5 to 10 percent. However, he records that that percentage has skyrocketed to 30 and 40 percent. He calls this a stunning development and will be included in his forthcoming book American Grace. Putnam suggests this development started in the 1990s and continues through today. These nones do not belong to a church but are not necessarily atheists. He suggests that these young nones have the same morals and attitudes as people in church but grew up in an age where religious meant politically conservative, especially on social issues. I used this article for the statistic of young Americans that are not affiliated with a church to justify using young non-religious Americans as my audience. Riley, Jennifer. "Christian Charities Rank High in Top 100." Christian Post. Taboola, 10 Dec. 2007. Web. 01 Apr. 2014. <http://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-charities-rank-high-in-top-100-us-nonprofits-30411/>. I cited this article because it had great insight to just how many Christian organizations make up the greater part of non-profit charities in the US. Jennifer Riley, a Christian Post reporter, noted that nearly a quarter of the top 100 list of nonprofit organizations were made up of Christian charities in 2007. Notably, three of the top ten best charities were Habitat for Humanity, Salvation Army, Catholic Charities. Also to consider, she mentions that a quarter of the top 20 charities were Christian. Other Christian organizations that are well known are Samaritans Feet, Compassion International, World Vision, and Food for the Poor. This article has given insight to the fact that a lot of organizations that groups tend to lean towards are in fact Christian and a lot of non-affiliates still participate in these charities despite conflicting views.