An important principle of EA is trying to maximize how much good you do, when you’re trying to do good. So EAs probably won’t advise you to base most of your charitable giving on emotional connection (which is unlikely to be highly correlated with cost-effectiveness) -- instead, according to EA, you should base this on some kind of cost-effectiveness calculation.
However, many EAs do give some amount to causes they personally identify with, even if they set aside most of their donations for more cost-effective causes. (People often talk about “warm fuzzies” in this context, i.e. donations that give you a warm fuzzy feeling.) In that sense, some amount of emotion-based giving is completely compatible with EA.
An important principle of EA is trying to maximize how much good you do, when you’re trying to do good. So EAs probably won’t advise you to base most of your charitable giving on emotional connection (which is unlikely to be highly correlated with cost-effectiveness) -- instead, according to EA, you should base this on some kind of cost-effectiveness calculation.
However, many EAs do give some amount to causes they personally identify with, even if they set aside most of their donations for more cost-effective causes. (People often talk about “warm fuzzies” in this context, i.e. donations that give you a warm fuzzy feeling.) In that sense, some amount of emotion-based giving is completely compatible with EA.