Abstract Belief in powerful supernatural agents that enforce moral norms has been theoretically linked with cooperative altruism and prosociality. Correspondingly, prior research reveals an implicit ...association between atheism and extreme antisociality (e.g., serial murder). However, findings centered on associations between lack of faith and moral transgression do not directly address the hypothesized conceptual association between religious belief and prosociality. Accordingly, we conducted two pre-registered experiments depicting a “serial helper” to assess biases related to extraordinary helpfulness, mirroring designs depicting a serial killer used in prior cross-cultural work. In both a predominantly religious society (the U.S., Study 1) and a predominantly secular society (New Zealand, Study 2), we successfully replicated previous research linking atheism with transgression, and obtained evidence for a substantially stronger conceptual association between religiosity and virtue. The results suggest that stereotypes linking religiosity with prosociality are both real and global in scale.
Please note that following publication of the original article 1, one of the authors has flagged that the abbreviations section lists "BRIC" as "Britain, Russia, India and China".
Objective
In the current project, we focus on another group of unusual altruists: people who have taken the Giving What We Can (GWWC) pledge to donate at least 10% of their income to charity. Our ...project aims to understand what is unique about this population.
Background
Many people care about helping, but in recent years there has been a surge of research examining those whose moral concern for others goes far beyond that of the typical population. These unusual altruists (also termed extraordinary or extreme altruists or moral exemplars) make great personal sacrifices to help others—such as donating their kidneys to strangers or participating in COVID‐19 vaccine challenge trials.
Method
In a global study (N = 536) we examine a number of cognitive and personality traits of GWWC pledgers and compare them to a country‐matched comparison group.
Results
In accordance with our predictions, GWWC pledgers were better at identifying fearful faces, more morally expansive and higher in actively open‐minded thinking, need for cognition and two subscales of utilitarianism and, tentatively, lower in social dominance orientation. Against our predictions, they were lower in maximizing tendency. Finally, we found an inconclusive relationship between pledger status and empathy/compassion that we believe warrants further examination.
Conclusions
These findings offer initial insights into the characteristics that set apart those who have made the decision to donate a substantial portion of their income to help others.
Background
Need‐altruism (a preference to help people in need) and kin‐altruism (a preference to help kin over non‐kin) underlie two hypotheses for voluntary blood donation: (i) Need‐altruism ...underlies motivations for volunteer blood donation and (ii) Black people express a stronger preference for kin‐altruism, which is a potential barrier to donation. This paper tests these hypotheses and explores how need‐ and kin‐altruism are associated with wider altruistic motivations, barriers, and strategies to encourage donation.
Methods
We assessed need‐ and kin‐altruism, other mechanisms‐of‐altruism (e.g., reluctant‐altruism), barriers, strategies to encourage donation, donor status, and willingness‐to‐donate across four groups based on ethnicity (Black; White), nationality (British; Nigerian), and country‐of‐residence: (i) Black‐British people (n = 395), and Black‐Nigerian people (ii) in the UK (n = 97) or (iii) across the rest of the world (n = 101), and (v) White‐British people in the UK (n = 452). We also sampled a Black‐Nigerian Expert group (n = 60).
Results
Need‐altruism was higher in donors and associated with willingness‐to‐donate in non‐donors. Levels of kin‐altruism did not differ between Black and White people, but need‐altruism was lower in Black‐British people. Kin‐altruism was associated with a preference for incentives, and need‐altruism with a preference for recognition (e.g., a thank you) as well as an increased willingness‐to‐donate for Black non‐donors. Need‐altruism underlies a blood‐donor‐cooperative‐phenotype.
Conclusion
Need‐altruism is central to blood donation, in particular recruitment. Lower need‐altruism may be a specific barrier for Black‐British people. Kin‐altruism is important for Black non‐donors. The blood donor cooperative phenotype deserves further consideration. Implications for blood services are discussed.
We develop a theory of parent-child relations that rationalizes the choice between alternative parenting styles (as set out in Baumrind (1967)). Parents maximize an objective function that combines ...Beckerian altruism and paternalism towards children. They can affect their children's choices via two channels: either by influencing children's preferences or by imposing direct restrictions on their choice sets. Different parenting styles (authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive) emerge as equilibrium outcomes and are affected both by parental preferences and by the socioeconomic environment. Parenting style, in turn, feeds back into the children's welfare and economic success. The theory is consistent with the decline of authoritarian parenting observed in industrialized countries and with the greater prevalence of more permissive parenting in countries characterized by low inequality.
We link risk preferences, as measured by the coefficient of relative risk aversion, with the prevalence and intensity of altruism, which we operationalize by the propensity of a person to voluntarily ...transfer part of his wealth to another person. To quantify the intensity of altruism, we incorporate a coefficient αi∈(0,1) in the utility function of an altruistic person i. This coefficient measures the extent to which the altruistic person derives utility from the wellbeing of another person. We show that an altruistic person who is an active donor (benefactor) is more risk averse than a non-altruistic person, and that the relative risk aversion of altruistic person i is an increasing function of αi. In addition, we show, in line with intuition, that person j who is the beneficiary of an altruistic transfer is less risk averse than a comparable person who is not a beneficiary of an altruistic transfer, and that the relative risk aversion of person j is a decreasing function of αi. When we analyze a setting in which two persons are altruistic towards each other, we find that, in essence, the risk aversion consequences of mutual altruism do not differ from the risk aversion consequences of unilateral altruism.
•We link risk preferences with the prevalence and intensity of altruism.•An altruistic person who is an active donor is more risk averse than a non-altruistic person.•The relative risk aversion of an altruistic person is an increasing function of the intensity of his altruism.•The beneficiary of an altruistic transfer is less risk averse than a comparable person who is not a beneficiary of an altruistic transfer.•The relative risk aversion of the beneficiary of an altruistic transfer is a decreasing function of the intensity of the altruism of the donor.
The Psychology of (In)Effective Altruism Caviola, Lucius; Schubert, Stefan; Greene, Joshua D.
Trends in cognitive sciences,
07/2021, Volume:
25, Issue:
7
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The most effective charities are hundreds of times more effective than typical charities, yet few donors prioritize effectiveness. Why is that? How might we increase the effectiveness of charitable ...giving? We review the motivational and epistemic causes of (in)effective giving. Many donors view charitable giving as a matter of personal preference, which favors decisions based on emotional appeal rather than effectiveness. In addition, while many donors are motivated to give effectively, they often have misconceptions and cognitive biases that reduce effective giving. Nearly all research on charitable giving interventions focuses on increasing donation amounts. However, to increase societal benefit, donation effectiveness is likely to be more important. This underscores the need for research on strategies to encourage effective giving.
Effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement that advocates using the most effective, evidence-based strategies to benefit others. Here we focus on charitable giving, a domain in which ordinary people can have a large impact.Most behavioral research on charitable giving focuses on donation amounts, but the impact of giving depends more on the effectiveness of the charities people support than on how much they give. We review recent research on the factors that promote (in)effective giving.There are motivational and epistemic obstacles to effective giving: People are often drawn to less effective charities, and to the extent that people want to give effectively, they typically do not know how to do it.We discuss strategies to encourage effective giving. Several strategies are feasible and warrant further research, as the potential social benefits are large.
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