Of course, it’s difficult to say what the most important thing we have to learn about generosity is, but the first four research projects we’re funding at the Science of Generosity initiative suggest that we have plenty of important things to learn about what causes generosity in various relationships and social settings. The range of disciplines represented in those projects suggests, too, that it will be important to learn about generosity from multiple perspectives that use different methodologies. Since the science of generosity is in its infancy, it is important for us to support basic projects concerned with fundamental questions that might have broad significance for the field.

Ariel Knafo of Hebrew University is working on “The Family Cycle of Kindness and Generosity.” For many years, the field of child development focused on the classic question of “nature vs. nurture”; but for the last 20 years, it has begun to focus on the question of nature and nurture, examining the relationship among child development, genetics, and environment. The project will be conducted by an international team of psychologists who will investigate the complex interactions between biological and environmental processes that contribute to the development of a generous disposition in children, and examine how those processes—combined with parenting—create familial habits of generosity and kindness. One unique element of this study is that it will look not only at how parental generosity affects children, but also at how the generosity that flows from parent to child returns to parents and further affects their generosity. In order to distinguish between the genetic and environmental sources of generosity, the researchers will use extensive twin studies.

Another project will look at the discursive and ritual practices that cause generous behavior among believers in two of the world’s major religions. Arizona State University political scientist Carolyn Warner will focus on Catholicism and Islam in order to understand “The Role of Religious Beliefs and Institutions in Generosity.” One reason that her project attracted us is that over the years, studies and media reports on Catholicism and Islam have tended to focus on the actions of two controversial popes and Islamic terrorist networks and integration problems, sometimes obscuring the fact that both Catholicism and Islam are two vibrant religions that often predispose their believers to engage in acts of generosity.

Although many of the world’s religions treat charity as a virtue and obligation, we understand little about how religions affect the generosity of their adherents. Through her research, Warner hopes to answer the following questions: What specific beliefs and practices of Catholicism and Islam foster generosity? Do these vary across religious traditions? Do religious traditions encourage generosity toward outsiders, or do they tend to favor their own? Do religions sometimes create obstacles to generosity even as they seek to foster it?

Two other projects we’re funding look at generosity in the context of two different kinds of social relationships. James Andreoni is the University of California, San Diego economist who coined the term “warm-glow effect” to refer to the positive emotional experience that leads charitable donors to repeat their behavior. His project is called “The Inherent Sociality of Giving and Altruism,” and it challenges the received economic wisdom that charitable donors are motivated by self-interest. Some recent research indicates that generous acts are fundamentally social and so need to be understood in the context of the relationship between donor and recipient. Because generous acts are social, they are also prone to manipulation by norms, the expectations of others, and self-expectations, and they need to be understood as such. Andreoni aims to build upon earlier research into the sociality of giving by looking at the role that empathy plays in the donor-recipient relationship.

While Andreoni’s project is designed to get at the intricacies of the dyadic relationship between donor and recipient, Harvard University sociologist Nicholas Christakis’ research aims to investigate the idea that generosity can spread beyond the dyadic relationship to third persons and beyond within a social network—and that there is a deep relationship between generosity and people’s social bonds. According to Christakis, generosity is a key predicate for the formation and operation of social networks, a fact that is just beginning to draw the attention of network scientists, social scientists, and biologists. If people never behaved generously or altruistically toward one another, then social bonds would dissolve and the network around us disintegrate; some degree of generosity is crucial for the emergence and endurance of social networks. Moreover, once networks are established, cascades of generous acts can spread through them.

These four projects are just now getting under way, but they seem to me to pose some compelling basic questions about generosity, and promise interesting and important findings.

Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame.