I simply couldn't wrap my head around the idea of personally wanting to give money or time away without a direct return. However, I changed something else in my personality earlier this week -- a particular incidence of learned helplessness -- and afterward, charity suddenly made sense to me in a way that it simply never had before

Can you elaborate on what you changed? I'd love to know how it made sense to you.

Pay special attention to how they think, in the sense of types of processing steps and what emotional attitudes they seem to hold

I wish I could do this more, but how do you get accurate information on how people think? Even if they self-report honestly, without censoring themselves, they may not know exactly what they're doing and they may be biased in their interpretations.