I asked my team about this, and Sky provided the following information. This quarter CEA did a small brand test, with Rethink’s help. We asked a sample of US college students if they had heard of “effective altruism.” Some respondents were also asked to give a brief definition of EA and a Likert scale rating of how negative/positive their first impression was of “effective altruism.”
Students who had never heard of “effective altruism” before the survey still had positive associations with it. Comments suggested that they thought it sounded good - effectiveness means doing things well; altruism means kindness and helping people. (IIRC, the average Likert scale score was 4+ out of 5). There were a small number of critiques too, but fewer than we expected. (Sorry that this is just a high-level summary—we don’t have a full writeup ready yet.)
Caveats: We didn’t test the name “effective altruism” against other possible names. Impressions will probably vary by audience. Maybe “EA” puts off a small-but-important subsection of the audience we tested on (e.g. unusually critical/free-thinking people).
I don’t think this is dispositive—I think that testing other brands might still be a good idea. We’re currently considering trying to hire someone to test and develop the EA brand, and help field media enquiries. I’m grateful for the work that Rethink and Sky Mayhew have been doing on this.
I wonder if there would be a strong difference between “What do you think of a group/concept called ‘effective altruism’”, “Would you join a group called ‘effective altruism’”, “What would you think of someone who calls themselves an ‘effective altruist’”, “Would you call yourself an ‘effective altruist’”.
I wonder which of these questions is most important in selecting a name.
I asked my team about this, and Sky provided the following information. This quarter CEA did a small brand test, with Rethink’s help. We asked a sample of US college students if they had heard of “effective altruism.” Some respondents were also asked to give a brief definition of EA and a Likert scale rating of how negative/positive their first impression was of “effective altruism.”
Students who had never heard of “effective altruism” before the survey still had positive associations with it. Comments suggested that they thought it sounded good - effectiveness means doing things well; altruism means kindness and helping people. (IIRC, the average Likert scale score was 4+ out of 5). There were a small number of critiques too, but fewer than we expected. (Sorry that this is just a high-level summary—we don’t have a full writeup ready yet.)
Caveats: We didn’t test the name “effective altruism” against other possible names. Impressions will probably vary by audience. Maybe “EA” puts off a small-but-important subsection of the audience we tested on (e.g. unusually critical/free-thinking people).
I don’t think this is dispositive—I think that testing other brands might still be a good idea. We’re currently considering trying to hire someone to test and develop the EA brand, and help field media enquiries. I’m grateful for the work that Rethink and Sky Mayhew have been doing on this.
I wonder if there would be a strong difference between “What do you think of a group/concept called ‘effective altruism’”, “Would you join a group called ‘effective altruism’”, “What would you think of someone who calls themselves an ‘effective altruist’”, “Would you call yourself an ‘effective altruist’”.
I wonder which of these questions is most important in selecting a name.
Thanks for sharing that info, Max. It was an interesting first pass at some of these questions.