Is the tendency to morally prioritize humans over animals weaker in children than adults? In two preregistered studies (total N = 622), 5- to 9-year-old children and adults were presented with moral ...dilemmas pitting varying numbers of humans against varying numbers of either dogs or pigs and were asked who should be saved. In both studies, children had a weaker tendency than adults to prioritize humans over animals. They often chose to save multiple dogs over one human, and many valued the life of a dog as much as the life of a human. Although they valued pigs less, the majority still prioritized 10 pigs over one human. By contrast, almost all adults chose to save one human over even 100 dogs or pigs. Our findings suggest that the common view that humans are far more morally important than animals appears late in development and is likely socially acquired.
Effective Altruism and the Human Mind explains why people often don’t choose the most effective strategies to help others and shows what can be done to change that. Many people are looking to make ...the world a better place, for instance, through donations or volunteering. But even though some strategies for doing good (e.g., some charities) are much more effective than the alternatives, most people’s efforts aren’t directed toward those effective strategies. Part I seeks to explain why that is, building on decades of psychological research. It’s shown that most people think that do-gooding should be guided by subjective preferences rather than by objective metrics of effectiveness. Since they often prefer less effective strategies (e.g., many prefer causes they have a personal connection with even if they’re less effective), this attitude reduces the effectiveness of their help. Moreover, most people lack knowledge about how to do good effectively, reducing their effectiveness further. Part II, in turn, discusses how we can address these issues and increase the effectiveness of people’s help. It covers both targeted informational, nudging, and incentivization techniques, on the one hand, and fundamental value change, on the other. The book ends with a discussion of how to implement effective altruism in practice, in a way that’s informed by psychological research.
We explore whether priming emotion versus deliberation affects speciesism—the tendency to prioritize certain individuals over others on the basis of their species membership (three main and two ...supplementary studies, four preregistered; N = 3,288). We find that the tendency to prioritize humans over animals (anthropocentric speciesism) decreases when participants were asked to think emotionally compared to deliberatively. In contrast, the tendency to prioritize dogs over other animals (pet speciesism) increases when participants were asked to think emotionally compared to deliberatively. We hypothesize that, emotionally, people like animals in general and dogs in particular; however, deliberatively, people attribute higher moral status to humans than animals and roughly equal status to dogs, chimpanzees, elephants, and pigs. In support of this explanation, participants tended to discriminate between animals based on likability when thinking emotionally and based on moral status when thinking deliberatively. These findings shed light on the psychological underpinnings of speciesism.
Recent research has relied on trolley-type sacrificial moral dilemmas to study utilitarian versus nonutilitarian modes of moral decision-making. This research has generated important insights into ...people's attitudes toward instrumental harm-that is, the sacrifice of an individual to save a greater number. But this approach also has serious limitations. Most notably, it ignores the positive, altruistic core of utilitarianism, which is characterized by impartial concern for the well-being of everyone, whether near or far. Here, we develop, refine, and validate a new scale-the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale-to dissociate individual differences in the 'negative' (permissive attitude toward instrumental harm) and 'positive' (impartial concern for the greater good) dimensions of utilitarian thinking as manifested in the general population. We show that these are two independent dimensions of proto-utilitarian tendencies in the lay population, each exhibiting a distinct psychological profile. Empathic concern, identification with the whole of humanity, and concern for future generations were positively associated with impartial beneficence but negatively associated with instrumental harm; and although instrumental harm was associated with subclinical psychopathy, impartial beneficence was associated with higher religiosity. Importantly, although these two dimensions were independent in the lay population, they were closely associated in a sample of moral philosophers. Acknowledging this dissociation between the instrumental harm and impartial beneficence components of utilitarian thinking in ordinary people can clarify existing debates about the nature of moral psychology and its relation to moral philosophy as well as generate fruitful avenues for further research.
The many obstacles to effective giving Caviola, Lucius; Schubert, Stefan; Nemirow, Jason
Judgment and decision making,
03/2020, Letnik:
15, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Abstract
When people donate, they rarely give to the charities that do the most good per dollar. Why is this? One possibility is that they do not know how to give effectively. Another possibility is ...that they are not motivated to do so. Across six tasks (Studies 1a, 1b), we found support for both explanations. Among lay donors, we observed multiple misconceptions—regarding disaster relief, overhead costs, donation splitting, and the relative effectiveness of local and foreign charities—that reduced the effectiveness of their giving. Similarly, we found that they were unfamiliar with the most effective charities (Studies 2a, 2b). Debunking these misconceptions and informing people about effectiveness boosted effective donations; however, a portion of lay donors continued to give ineffectively to satisfy their personal preferences. By contrast, a sample of self-identified effective altruists gave effectively across all tasks. They exhibited none of the misconceptions that we observed among lay donors and overwhelmingly favored the most effective option in their choice set (Study 3). Taken together, our studies imply that donors need to be both informed and motivated to give effectively on a consistent basis.
The 21st century will likely see growing risks of human extinction, but currently, relatively small resources are invested in reducing such existential risks. Using three samples (UK general public, ...US general public, and UK students; total N = 2,507), we study how laypeople reason about human extinction. We find that people think that human extinction needs to be prevented. Strikingly, however, they do not think that an extinction catastrophe would be uniquely bad relative to near-extinction catastrophes, which allow for recovery. More people find extinction uniquely bad when (a) asked to consider the extinction of an animal species rather than humans, (b) asked to consider a case where human extinction is associated with less direct harm, and (c) they are explicitly prompted to consider long-term consequences of the catastrophes. We conclude that an important reason why people do not find extinction uniquely bad is that they focus on the immediate death and suffering that the catastrophes cause for fellow humans, rather than on the long-term consequences. Finally, we find that (d) laypeople-in line with prominent philosophical arguments-think that the quality of the future is relevant: they do find extinction uniquely bad when this means forgoing a utopian future.
Philosophers have argued there is a normative relationship between our attitudes towards animals (“speciesism”) and other prejudices, and psychological work suggests speciesism relies on similar ...psychological processes and motivations as those underlying other prejudices. But do laypeople perceive such a connection? We compared perceptions of a target who is high or low on speciesism with those of a target who is high or low on racism (Studies 1–2), sexism (Study 2), or homophobia (Study 3). We find that just like racists, sexists, and homophobes, speciesists were both evaluated more negatively and expected to hold more general prejudicial attitudes and ideologies (e.g., thought to be higher on SDO and more prejudiced in other ways). Our results suggest that laypeople seem intuitively aware of the connection between speciesism and “traditional” forms of prejudice, inferring similar personality traits and general prejudicial attitudes from a speciesist just as they do from a racist, sexist, or homophobe.
There is public support in the United States and Europe for accounting for animal welfare in national policies on food and agriculture. Although an emerging body of research has measured animals’ ...capacity to suffer, there has been no specific attempt to analyze how this information is interpreted by the public or how exactly it should be reflected in policy. The aim of this study was to quantify Americans’ preferences about farming methods and the suffering they impose on different species to generate a metric for weighing the trade-offs between different approaches of promoting animal welfare. A survey of 502 residents of the United States was implemented using the online platform Mechanical Turk. Using respondent data, we developed the species-adjusted measure of suffering-years (SAMYs), an analogue of the disability-adjusted life year, to calculate the suffering endured under different farming conditions by cattle, pigs, and chickens, the three most commonly consumed animals. Nearly one-third (30%) of respondents reported that they believed animal suffering should be taken into account to a degree equal to or above human suffering. The 2016 suffering burden in the United States according to two tested conditions (poor genetics and cramped confinement) was approximately 66 million SAMYs for pigs, 156 million SAMYs for cattle, and 1.3 billion SAMYs for chickens. This calculation lends early guidance for efforts to reduce animal suffering, demonstrating that to address the highest burden policymakers should focus first on improving conditions for chickens.
Some charities are much more cost-effective than other charities, which means that they can save many more lives with the same amount of money. Yet most donations do not go to the most effective ...charities. Why is that? We hypothesized that part of the reason is that people underestimate how much more effective the most effective charities are compared with the average charity. Thus, they do not know how much more good they could do if they donated to the most effective charities. We studied this hypothesis using samples of the general population, students, experts, and effective altruists in five studies. We found that lay people estimated that among charities helping the global poor, the most effective charities are 1.5 times more effective than the average charity (Studies 1 and 2). Effective altruists, in contrast, estimated the difference to be factor 30 (Study 3) and experts estimated the factor to be 100 (Study 4). We found that participants donated more to the most effective charity, and less to an average charity, when informed about the large difference in cost-effectiveness (Study 5). In conclusion, misconceptions about the difference in effectiveness between charities is thus likely one reason, among many, why people donate ineffectively.
The non-identity problem arises when our actions in the present could change which people will exist in the future, for better or worse. Is it morally better to improve the lives of specific future ...people, as compared to changing which people exist for the better? Affecting the timing of fetuses being conceived is one case where present actions change the identity of future people. This is relevant to questions of public health policy, as exemplified in some responses to the Zika epidemic. There is philosophical disagreement about the relevance of non-identity: some hold that non-identity is not relevant, while others think that the only morally relevant actions are those that affect specific people. Given this disagreement, we investigated the intuitions about the moral relevance of non-identity within an educated sample of the public, because there was previously little empirical data on the public's views on the non-identity problem.
We performed an online survey with a sample of the educated general public. The survey assessed participants' preferences between person-affecting and impersonal interventions for Zika, and their views on other non-identity thought experiments, once the non-identity problem had been explained. It aimed to directly measure the importance of non-identity in participants' moral decision-making.
We collected 763 valid responses from the survey. Half of the participants (50%) had a graduate degree, 47% had studied philosophy at a university level, and 20% had read about the non-identity problem before. Most participants favoured person-affecting interventions for Zika over impersonal ones, but the majority claimed that non-identity did not influence their decision (66% of those preferring person-affecting interventions, 95% of those preferring impersonal ones). In one non-identity thought experiment participants were divided, but in another they primarily answered that impersonally reducing the quality of life of future people would be wrong, harmful and blameworthy, even though no specific individuals would be worse off.
Non-identity appeared to play a minor role in participants' moral decision-making. Moreover, participants seem to either misunderstand the non-identity problem, or hold non-counterfactual views of harm that do not define harm as making someone worse off than they would have been otherwise.
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