Another consideration here: participants knew they were in an experiment, and probably had a good sense of what you were aiming at.
The difference in treatment and control was whether people
were asked to estimate the difference in cost-effectiveness between average and highly effective charities – or they had a control task.”
and whether (2x2 here)
“participants either were told that the difference in cost-effectiveness is 100x – or they were told control, irrelevant information. ”
If either of these increased their stated interest in EA or their giving behavior, it would be informative, but we still might want to be careful in making inferences to the impact of these activities and this ‘de-biasing’ in real world contexts.
Either of these tasks might have heightened the ‘desirability bias’ or the extent to which people considered their choices in a particular analytical way that they might not have done had they not known they were in an experiment.
Another consideration here: participants knew they were in an experiment, and probably had a good sense of what you were aiming at.
The difference in treatment and control was whether people
were asked to estimate the difference in cost-effectiveness between average and highly effective charities – or they had a control task.”
and whether (2x2 here)
“participants either were told that the difference in cost-effectiveness is 100x – or they were told control, irrelevant information. ”
If either of these increased their stated interest in EA or their giving behavior, it would be informative, but we still might want to be careful in making inferences to the impact of these activities and this ‘de-biasing’ in real world contexts.
Either of these tasks might have heightened the ‘desirability bias’ or the extent to which people considered their choices in a particular analytical way that they might not have done had they not known they were in an experiment.