Personality traits and traditional philanthropy: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Volunteering and charitable giving are core examples of traditional philanthropy that contribute to the health of democratic societies and individual well-being. Differences in people's willingness to engage in these behaviors hint at a role of psychological factors that foster or hinder these types of philanthropic engagement. Theory and empirical research suggest that broad personality traits may shape volunteering and charitable giving. However, existing evidence for links between specific traits and philanthropic engagement has been mixed, in part because of insufficient statistical power and methodological variation across studies. In this preregistered meta-analysis, we integrated data from 29 studies to estimate the associations between the Big Five personality traits with volunteering (N = 91,241, median age = 34 years, 61% female, 36% U.S. samples) and charitable giving (N = 3,559, median age = 39 years, 52% female, 40% U.S. samples). We further examined potential moderators, including the types of personality and philanthropic behavior measures used, gender, age, and sample region, to begin to explain the substantial heterogeneity of effect sizes across studies. Results indicated modest but robust correlations between the Big Five personality traits, volunteering, and charitable giving, with the largest effect sizes emerging for the links between extraversion and volunteering (r = .09, 95% CI [.05, .12]) and for agreeableness and charitable giving (r = .14, 95% CI [.04, .25]). There was little evidence for systematic moderator effects. We describe the theoretical implications of these results for future research, discuss practical applications, and highlight gaps in this body of literature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).