person
Enna Chen
Enna Chen (she/they) is a PhD student at the Stanford Life-Span Development Laboratory in the Department of Psychology. She is broadly interested in prosocial behavior across the adult life span, with a particular focus on philanthropy in older generations. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a minor in Education.
PACS PhD Fellow Spotlight, April 2025
The Stanford PACS PhD Fellowship Program supports outstanding young scholars at Stanford who are pursuing research that pushes the boundaries of knowledge in philanthropy, social impact, democracy, digital society, and beyond. Each year, we welcome a cohort of students from diverse disciplines, providing them with funding, mentorship, and an intellectual community where they can refine their research and contribute to critical conversations. Through this monthly series, we highlight the incredible work of our PhD Fellows—sharing their insights, research journeys, and the impact they hope to make.
This month, we spoke with Enna Chen, a PhD candidate in Psychology at Stanford, about her research on what motivates people, especially older adults, to care for others through charitable giving and volunteerism. Enna’s work explores how age shapes generosity, and how this understanding might help redirect a portion of the Great Wealth Transfer in the U.S. toward the public good.
Could you tell us about your research project and what motivated you to pursue this research topic?
I study what motivates people to care for others, from emotional experiences like empathy to concrete actions like charitable giving and volunteering. I am especially interested in ways to encourage charitable donations across age groups, with a focus on older generations. I was drawn to this topic because of the striking concentration of wealth among older Americans. According to the Federal Reserve, as of early 2025, adults aged 55 and older hold over 72 percent of the nation’s wealth. The vast majority of this wealth is expected to be passed down to heirs, much of it in ways that may reinforce existing inequality. My work explores how we might redirect even a small share of that intergenerational transfer toward the public good. Across a series of studies, I investigate various strategies to foster generosity in both older and younger adults.
How does your research help address real-world challenges related to civil society or philanthropy and contribute to advancements in your field?
We are in the midst of the greatest wealth transfer in U.S. history. Earlier this year, Cerulli Associates projected that between now and 2048, $124 trillion will be passed down from older generations, with $105 trillion to heirs and only $18 trillion to charitable causes. This moment presents both a significant challenge and a meaningful opportunity for reimagining how private wealth can serve the public good. My research engages with this issue by exploring strategies to encourage greater charitable giving among older adults. On a theoretical level, my research contributes to emerging work at the nexus of life-span developmental psychology, affective science, behavioral economics, and decision science by examining how age-related shifts in motivation, emotion, and cognition influence generosity across the adult life span. Ultimately, I hope this work contributes to a growing appreciation of how generosity can be nurtured across all stages of life.
What is one unique or important thing you want others to know about your research?
I come from a background studying how couples grow old together—a pursuit that began as an earnest dream to become either a couples therapist or a psychic, but ended due to a tragic lack of talent in both. Through my research and many meaningful interactions with participants, I came to see how older adults are often mischaracterized in public discourse. They are frequently portrayed as lonely, incompetent, or frail, yet a wealth of research—including foundational work by my advisor, Laura Carstensen—has shown that healthy aging is accompanied by greater emotional well-being and resilience. In my own work, I found that older age is also associated with increased generosity, contributing to a growing literature that underscores the social value of older generations. My research on age-related differences in emotion, motivation, and cognition helps me understand how people of different ages make decisions about giving. So while I never earned a front-row seat to the romantic comedies of real life, I now design strategies grounded in psychological science that promote charitable donations across the adult life span.
If you weren’t in graduate school, what would you be doing?
I would live by a lake in the mountains and conduct the official orchestra of the forest. Most of my days would be spent managing the interpersonal drama between overachieving frog violinists and existentially overwhelmed raccoon percussionists, which would allow me to study psychology in a more naturalistic setting.
I chose graduate school instead because it seemed like the slightly more realistic option.