💌 The EA Behavioral Science Newsletter #3


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The EA Behavioral Science Newsletter

For behavioral researchers interested in effective altruism

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📚 Summary

📖 Seventeen publications

📝 Seven preprints & articles

💬 Six forum posts

🎧/🎦 Seven podcasts/videos

💰 Two funding opportunities

💼 Four jobs

🗓 No new events

👨‍🔬 Simon Myers profiled

📖 Publications

Population ethical intuitions (summary)

Lucius Caviola, David Althaus, Andreas L. Mogensen & Geoffrey P. Goodwin

Cognition (2022)

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Is humanity's existence worthwhile? If so, where should the human species be headed in the future? In part, the answers to these questions require us to morally evaluate the (potential) human population in terms of its size and aggregate welfare. This assessment lies at the heart of population ethics. Our investigation across nine experiments (N = 5776) aimed to answer three questions about how people aggregate welfare across individuals: (1) Do they weigh happiness and suffering symmetrically?; (2) Do they focus more on the average or total welfare of a given population?; and (3) Do they account only for currently existing lives, or also lives that could yet exist?

We found that, first, participants believed that more happy than unhappy people were needed in order for the whole population to be net positive (Studies 1a-c). Second, participants had a preference both for populations with greater total welfare and populations with greater average welfare (Study 3a-d). Their focus on average welfare even led them (remarkably) to judge it preferable to add new suffering people to an already miserable world, as long as this increased average welfare. But, when prompted to reflect, participants' preference for the population with the better total welfare became stronger. Third, participants did not consider the creation of new people as morally neutral. Instead, they viewed it as good to create new happy people and as bad to create new unhappy people (Studies 2a-b). Our findings have implications for moral psychology, philosophy and global priority setting.

How Effective Altruism Can Help Psychologists Maximize Their Impact

Izzy Gainsburg, Shiva Pauer, Abboub Nawal, Eamon T. Aloyo, Jean-Christophe Mourrat & Alejandrina Cristia

Perspectives on Psychological Science (2022)

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Although many psychologists are interested in making the world a better place through their work, they are often unable to have the impact that they would like. Here, we suggest that both individuals and psychology as a field can better improve human welfare by incorporating ideas from Effective Altruism, a growing movement whose members aim to do the most good by using science and reason to inform their efforts. In this paper, we first provide a brief introduction to Effective Altruism and review important principles that can be applied to how psychologists approach their work, such as the ITN framework (Importance, Tractability, and Neglectedness).

Next, we review how effective altruism can inform individual psychologists' choices. Finally, we close with a discussion of ideas for how psychology, as a field, can increase its positive impact. By applying insights from effective altruism to psychological science, we aim to integrate a new theoretical framework into psychological science, stimulate new areas of research, start a discussion on how psychology can maximize its impact, and inspire the psychology community to do the most good.

Psychological barriers to effective altruism: An evolutionary perspective

Bastian Jaeger & Mark van Vug

Current Opinion in Psychology (2022)

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People usually engage in (or at least profess to engage in) altruistic acts to benefit others. Yet, they routinely fail to maximize how much good is achieved with their donated money and time. An accumulating body of research has uncovered various psychological factors that can explain why people's altruism tends to be ineffective. These prior studies have mostly focused on proximate explanations (e.g. emotions, preferences, lay beliefs).

Here, we adopt an evolutionary perspective and highlight how three fundamental motives — parochialism, status, and conformity — can explain many seemingly disparate failures to do good effectively. Our approach outlines ultimate explanations for ineffective altruism, and we illustrate how fundamental motives can be leveraged to promote more effective giving.

Going veggie: Identifying and overcoming the social and psychological barriers to veganism

Christopher J. Bryant, Annayah M. B. Prosser & Julie Barnett

Appetite (2021)

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We conceptualize the journey to ethical veganism in the stages of the transtheoretical model of change, from precontemplation through contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. At each stage, we explore the psychological barriers to progressing towards veganism, discuss how they manifest, and explore ways to overcome them. It is hoped that this paper can be used as a guide for animal advocates to identify the stage an individual is at, and understand and overcome the social and psychological barriers they may face to progressing. We argue that, while many people are ignorant of the cruel practices entailed in animal farming, many deliberately avoid thinking about the issue, are unable to appreciate the scale of the issue, and simply tend to favour the status quo.

When engaging with the issue of farm animal suffering, meat-eaters are largely driven by cognitive dissonance, which manifests as motivated reasoning aimed at protecting one's image of oneself and one's society. This is facilitated by confirmation bias and complicit media which cater to the preferred views of their meat-eating audience. Even once convinced of veganism, habit and willpower present further barriers to acting on those beliefs. This is all in the context of a speciesist and carnistic culture where meat consumption is normal, farming is noble, and vegans are ‘others’. We locate and elucidate each of these biases within the stages of the transtheoretical model and discuss the implications of this model for animal advocates and for further research.

Numbing or sensitization? Replications and extensions of Fetherstonhaugh et al. (1997)'s “Insensitivity to the Value of Human Life”

Ignazio Ziano, Qinyu Xiao, Siu Kit Yeung, Cho Yan Joan Wong, Mei Yee Cheung, Joey Lo, Melody Yan, Ivan Narendra, Li Wing Kwan, Rachel Chow, Chak Yam Man, & Gilad Feldman

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (2021)

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Is it better to save 4,500 lives out of 11,000 or 4,500 lives out of 250,000? Fetherstonhaugh ‎et al. (1997) showed that people prefer the former: to save lives if they are a higher ‎proportion of the total, a phenomenon they termed “psychophysical numbing”. We ‎attempted to replicate Studies 1 and 2 of Fetherstonhaugh et al. (1997) (5 data collections, ‎total N = 4799, MTurk and Prolific, USA and UK), and added several extensions (e.g., ‎donation amounts, procedural differences, and individual-level ideology and knowledge). ‎

We found mixed support, with two successful replications of Study 2 that indeed showed ‎psychophysical numbing (original: η2p = 0.55, 90% CI [0.45, 0.62], Study 2a: η2p = 0.62, 90% ‎CI [0.58, 0.66], Study 2b: η2p = 0.24, 90% CI [0.21, 0.27], all in same direction), yet also ‎three unsuccessful replications of Study 1 showing instead an opposite psychophysical ‎sensitization, a preference for saving a smaller proportion of lives (original effect size: η2p = ‎‎0.14, 90% CI [0.02, 0.28], replications: Study 1a: η2p = 0.06, 90% CI [0.02, 0.10], Study 1b: ‎η2p = 0.21, 90% CI [0.17, 0.26]; Study 1c: η2p = 0.13, 90% CI [0.08, 0.17], all in the opposite ‎direction).

We discuss theoretical implications and potential drivers of psychophysical ‎numbing and sensitization, including evaluation mode, comparison procedure, ideology, ‎knowledge, and prioritizing of one’s own country, and practical implications for research on ‎perceptions of charity, aid effectiveness, and donations. Materials, preregistrations, data, ‎and analyses are available at https://osf.io/786jg/. ‎