A replication lab or project to replicate and expand key EA research Movement building & conceptual dissemination
EA outreach and strategy is supported by a growing pool of social psychology research exploring EA related topics (e.g., appeals to change dietary or donation choice, understand moral views or related interventions etc). However, much social psychology research doesn’t replicate or varies depending on audience when retested. It’s therefore possible that some key findings and theories that guide EA are more or less valid or robust than currently believed.
We would therefore like to fund work to replicate key theories and findings. For instance, several independent teams at different universities/institutes might coordinate to attempt to replicate seminal early EA work using the researcher’s materials and Positly samples). The replication project could also expand to test findings relevant to EA that haven’t been replicated (e.g., interventions to promote charitable donation or prosocial behaviour). The work could be modelled on the Many Labs approach. We would also welcome work to build on or translate key conceptual tools from EA (e.g., the INT framework) within academic literature.
--- People seem to be relatively unimpressed by this ideas, so I’ll just add some explanation. My theory of change for how EA values affect science suggests that having stronger evidence for, and more frequent mentions of, key EA researcher and researchers is absolutely critical. Replication is one established way to do this and, in my view, the one that is mostly likely to succeed. A further benefit of replication work is that is allows junior researchers to develop skills and expertise much more efficiently and safely than if they have to produce new theoretical work from their own thinking. Doing a replication also makes them much better equipped to collaborate with and support the authors of the replicated papers with future work, or to expand on the work they replicated.
A replication lab or project to replicate and expand key EA research
Movement building & conceptual dissemination
EA outreach and strategy is supported by a growing pool of social psychology research exploring EA related topics (e.g., appeals to change dietary or donation choice, understand moral views or related interventions etc). However, much social psychology research doesn’t replicate or varies depending on audience when retested. It’s therefore possible that some key findings and theories that guide EA are more or less valid or robust than currently believed.
We would therefore like to fund work to replicate key theories and findings. For instance, several independent teams at different universities/institutes might coordinate to attempt to replicate seminal early EA work using the researcher’s materials and Positly samples). The replication project could also expand to test findings relevant to EA that haven’t been replicated (e.g., interventions to promote charitable donation or prosocial behaviour). The work could be modelled on the Many Labs approach. We would also welcome work to build on or translate key conceptual tools from EA (e.g., the INT framework) within academic literature.
---
People seem to be relatively unimpressed by this ideas, so I’ll just add some explanation. My theory of change for how EA values affect science suggests that having stronger evidence for, and more frequent mentions of, key EA researcher and researchers is absolutely critical. Replication is one established way to do this and, in my view, the one that is mostly likely to succeed. A further benefit of replication work is that is allows junior researchers to develop skills and expertise much more efficiently and safely than if they have to produce new theoretical work from their own thinking. Doing a replication also makes them much better equipped to collaborate with and support the authors of the replicated papers with future work, or to expand on the work they replicated.