You are wondering whether setting up an effective charity X against a not effective not-emotionally-engaging Y might be better to persuade people to give to X, rather than the scenario I did, of an effective charity X against a not effective but highly emotionally engaging Z, which might result in people giving to Z instead.
That’s pretty much it.
The reason… is that in the real world, people generally don’t make a trade-off between X and Y. In any situation where people are giving significant money to a charity, they are by definition already having a significant emotional bond with that charity. In other words, in the real world, it will always be a trade-off between X and Z.
I don’t entirely agree. I think many people give to [generic charity] because they want to do some good and this charity seems to do a good job but without any particular knowledge/interest/affiliation about/in/for the charity. Perhaps the disagreement about this is somewhat merely a verbal disagreement about “significant money” and “significant emotional bond.”
But I do think that there is clearly a difference between just any old charity which a person finds appealing and has a bond with and donates a significant amount of money to and a charity which is maximally elicits deontological trumping responses. I think domestic violence shelters are pretty close to the latter and more than most charities it would feel like a taboo to oppose or, indeed, taboo to apply instrumental, rational (i.e. cold, calculating) cost-benefit analysis to at all.
Consider the following comparison: ‘Your significant other/child will suffer a painful [gruesomely described] death unless you pay $1000, or you could use the $1000 to save X-many distant others from equivalently bad deaths. Which do you choose?’
^That seems emotionally evocative and challenging people’s biases, but unlikely to encourage people to favour effective giving.
In order to get people to actually change their minds, they need to have an emotionally engaging experience, where they get to truly face their biases, and avoid the opportunity to flinch away.
It seems plausible to me that people would “face their biases” presented with a more moderately appealing charity, whereas when presented with a maximally attractive charity they may be especially likely to “flinch away” and simply refuse to bite the bullet that helping many distant impoverished people is worth taking money away from female victims of domestic abuse.
there was no one who was not moved to give more to both charities
Some more money going to an effective charity is a good thing, but you’ve also talked about the benefits of getting people to accept ‘effective giving’ as a process. If people just decide to give more to both charities because ‘both are good’ plausibly they haven’t really adopted effective giving.
an emotionally engaging experience will be remembered much better down the road, rather than a dry educational one. There’s quite a lot of research on this, and so it would be way more effective to have an emotionally engaging GG.
No doubt more emotionally engaging things are remembered more, all else being equal. I’m not aware of any research which would settle the question of whether more emotionally engaging experiences (by opposing an effective charity to a particularly emotionally compelling ineffective one) would be good. If people are emotionally engaged by how awful it is to be asked to consider whether domestic abuse victims deserve money (asked only implicitly of c.) and remember the experience deeply, this may be no good thing.
No doubt more emotionally engaging things are remembered more, all else being equal. I’m not aware of any research which would settle the question of whether more emotionally engaging experiences (by opposing an effective charity to a particularly emotionally compelling ineffective one) would be good. If people are emotionally engaged by how awful it is to be asked to consider whether domestic abuse victims deserve money (asked only implicitly of c.) and remember the experience deeply, this may be no good thing.
It sounds like we are on the same page about the benefits of an emotionally engaging experience for the goal of moving people and having them remember the experience in the long term. So the only point of disagreement is whether the experience of the GG itself is worthwhile.
But I do think that there is clearly a difference between just any old charity which a person finds appealing and has a bond with and donates a significant amount of money to and a charity which is maximally elicits deontological trumping responses. I think domestic violence shelters are pretty close to the latter and more than most charities it would feel like a taboo to oppose or, indeed, taboo to apply instrumental, rational (i.e. cold, calculating) cost-benefit analysis to at all.
I see your point. I think this is a matter where we need to experiment and learn. I shared the experience of my experiment, which pretty clearly moved people strongly and causes them to be quite engaged with AMF. Intentional Insights will do other experiments and see what happens in future cases of emotionally intense charity comparisons.
My intuition is that we will have positive outcomes. Jon Behar’s comments here suggests he shares that intuitive sense. My guesstimate is that emotionally engaging experiences will be most powerful for changing long-term giving, and I am glad that Jon is studying this question.
However, I am happy to update—the goal is to get people to give effectively in the long run, after all :-) So if future experiments go differently, then we will change course.
Some more money going to an effective charity is a good thing, but you’ve also talked about the benefits of getting people to accept ‘effective giving’ as a process. If people just decide to give more to both charities because ‘both are good’ plausibly they haven’t really adopted effective giving
If people give to an effective charity as well as the emotionally engaging charity, they by definition implicitly accepted the value of effective giving to some extent—they have crossed some of the inference gap. So giving to both I perceive as a highly beneficial outcome, since this results in them shifting their giving to give at least something to effective charities. These are the kind of slow steps and behavior changes that will lead to big shifts of giving in the future.
That’s pretty much it.
I don’t entirely agree. I think many people give to [generic charity] because they want to do some good and this charity seems to do a good job but without any particular knowledge/interest/affiliation about/in/for the charity. Perhaps the disagreement about this is somewhat merely a verbal disagreement about “significant money” and “significant emotional bond.”
But I do think that there is clearly a difference between just any old charity which a person finds appealing and has a bond with and donates a significant amount of money to and a charity which is maximally elicits deontological trumping responses. I think domestic violence shelters are pretty close to the latter and more than most charities it would feel like a taboo to oppose or, indeed, taboo to apply instrumental, rational (i.e. cold, calculating) cost-benefit analysis to at all.
Consider the following comparison: ‘Your significant other/child will suffer a painful [gruesomely described] death unless you pay $1000, or you could use the $1000 to save X-many distant others from equivalently bad deaths. Which do you choose?’ ^That seems emotionally evocative and challenging people’s biases, but unlikely to encourage people to favour effective giving.
It seems plausible to me that people would “face their biases” presented with a more moderately appealing charity, whereas when presented with a maximally attractive charity they may be especially likely to “flinch away” and simply refuse to bite the bullet that helping many distant impoverished people is worth taking money away from female victims of domestic abuse.
Some more money going to an effective charity is a good thing, but you’ve also talked about the benefits of getting people to accept ‘effective giving’ as a process. If people just decide to give more to both charities because ‘both are good’ plausibly they haven’t really adopted effective giving.
No doubt more emotionally engaging things are remembered more, all else being equal. I’m not aware of any research which would settle the question of whether more emotionally engaging experiences (by opposing an effective charity to a particularly emotionally compelling ineffective one) would be good. If people are emotionally engaged by how awful it is to be asked to consider whether domestic abuse victims deserve money (asked only implicitly of c.) and remember the experience deeply, this may be no good thing.
It sounds like we are on the same page about the benefits of an emotionally engaging experience for the goal of moving people and having them remember the experience in the long term. So the only point of disagreement is whether the experience of the GG itself is worthwhile.
I see your point. I think this is a matter where we need to experiment and learn. I shared the experience of my experiment, which pretty clearly moved people strongly and causes them to be quite engaged with AMF. Intentional Insights will do other experiments and see what happens in future cases of emotionally intense charity comparisons.
My intuition is that we will have positive outcomes. Jon Behar’s comments here suggests he shares that intuitive sense. My guesstimate is that emotionally engaging experiences will be most powerful for changing long-term giving, and I am glad that Jon is studying this question.
However, I am happy to update—the goal is to get people to give effectively in the long run, after all :-) So if future experiments go differently, then we will change course.
If people give to an effective charity as well as the emotionally engaging charity, they by definition implicitly accepted the value of effective giving to some extent—they have crossed some of the inference gap. So giving to both I perceive as a highly beneficial outcome, since this results in them shifting their giving to give at least something to effective charities. These are the kind of slow steps and behavior changes that will lead to big shifts of giving in the future.