Yeah, the negative correlation between education and expansive altruism was also the most surprising to me.
However, these correlations might not hold up in the general population as it could be something specific to MTurkers.
It seems that the negative correlation is mostly due to the items “I would make a career change if it meant that I could improve the lives of people in need” (r = -.21, p < .001) and “From a moral perspective, the suffering of all beings matters roughly the same, no matter to what species they belong to” (r = -.18, p < .01). Perhaps more educated people are more happy with their career and thus more reluctant to change it? I don’t understand the negative correlation with the anti-speciesism item.
Perhaps more educated people are more happy with their career and thus more reluctant to change it?
Or just more invested in it—if you’ve spent several years acquiring a degree in a topic, you may be quite reluctant to go do something completely different.
For future studies, might be worth rephrasing this item in a way where this doesn’t act as a confounder for the results? I’d expect people in their early twenties to answer it quite differently than people in their early forties.
Yeah, the negative correlation between education and expansive altruism was also the most surprising to me.
However, these correlations might not hold up in the general population as it could be something specific to MTurkers.
It seems that the negative correlation is mostly due to the items “I would make a career change if it meant that I could improve the lives of people in need” (r = -.21, p < .001) and “From a moral perspective, the suffering of all beings matters roughly the same, no matter to what species they belong to” (r = -.18, p < .01). Perhaps more educated people are more happy with their career and thus more reluctant to change it? I don’t understand the negative correlation with the anti-speciesism item.
Or just more invested in it—if you’ve spent several years acquiring a degree in a topic, you may be quite reluctant to go do something completely different.
For future studies, might be worth rephrasing this item in a way where this doesn’t act as a confounder for the results? I’d expect people in their early twenties to answer it quite differently than people in their early forties.
Good point!
>I’d expect people in their early twenties to answer it quite differently than people in their early forties.
I’d have expected this as well but according to the data age doesn’t make a difference when it comes to answering the career item (r = -.04, p = .56).
Huh! That’s surprising.