We recently released the seventh edition of the EA Behavioral Science Newsletter.
Each newsletter curates papers, forum posts, reports, podcasts, resources, funding opportunities, events, jobs and research profiles that are relevant to the effective altruism and behavioral science community.
We have 731 subscribers and average 36 new subscribers per month.
You can read the newsletter in your browser or below.
P. Amormino, K. O’Connell, K.M. Vekaria, E.L. Robertson, L.B. Meena & A.A. Marsh
Social and Personality Psychology Compass (2022)
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Using a rare sample of altruistic kidney donors (n = 56, each of whom had donated a kidney to a stranger) and demographically similar controls (n = 75), we investigated how beliefs about human nature correspond to extraordinary altruism. Extraordinary altruists were less likely than controls to believe that humans can be truly evil. Results persisted after controlling for trait empathy and religiosity. Belief in pure good was not associated with extraordinary altruism. We found no differences in the religiosity and spirituality of extraordinary altruists compared to controls. Findings suggest that highly altruistic individuals believe that others deserve help regardless of their potential moral shortcomings. Results provide preliminary evidence that lower levels of cynicism motivate costly, non-normative altruism toward strangers.
Edward W. Maibach, Sri Saahitya Uppalapati, Margaret Orr & Jagadish Thaker
Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences (2022)
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A science-based understanding of climate change and potential mitigation and adaptation options can provide decision makers with important guidance in making decisions about how best to respond to the many challenges inherent in climate change. In this review we provide an evidence-based heuristic for guiding efforts to share science-based information about climate change with decision makers and the public at large. Well-informed decision makers are likely to make better decisions, but for a range of reasons, their inclinations to act on their decisions are not always realized into effective actions. We therefore also provide a second evidence-based heuristic for helping people and organizations change their climate change–relevant behaviors, should they decide to. These two guiding heuristics can help scientists and others harness the power of communication and behavior science in service of enhancing society’s response to climate change.
Many Earth scientists seeking to contribute to the climate science translation process feel frustrated by the inadequacy of the societal response. Here we summarize the social science literature by offering two guiding principles to guide communication and behavior change efforts. To improve public understanding, we recommend simple, clear messages, repeated often, by a variety of trusted and caring messengers. To encourage uptake of useful behaviors, we recommend making the behaviors easy, fun, and popular.
Charities differ, among other things, alongside the likelihood that their interventions succeed and produce the desired outcomes and alongside the extent that such likelihood can even be articulated numerically. In this paper, we investigate what best explains charitable giving behaviour regarding charities that have interventions that will succeed with a quantifiable and high probability (sure-thing charities) and charities that have interventions that only have a small and hard to quantify probability of bringing about the desired end (probabilistic charities). We study individual differences in risk/​ambiguity attitudes, empathy, numeracy, optimism, and donor type (warm glow vs. pure altruistic donor type) as potential predictors of this choice.
We conduct a money incentivised, pre-registered experiment on Prolific on a representative UK sample (n = 1,506) to investigate participant choices (i) between these two types of charities and (ii) about one randomly selected charity. Overall, we find little to no evidence that individual differences predict choices regarding decisions about sure-thing and probabilistic charities, with the exception that a purely altruistic donor type predicts donations to probabilistic charities when participants were presented with a randomly selected charity in (ii). Conducting exploratory equivalence tests, we find that the data provide robust evidence in favour of the absence of an effect (or a negligibly small effect) where we fail to reject the null. This is corroborated by exploratory Bayesian analyses. We take this paper to be contributing to the literature on charitable giving via this comprehensive null-result in pursuit of contributing to a cumulative science.
The “Unjournal”; is offering an “Impactful Research Prize” ($2500 and $1000) for submissions. They also provide journal-independent feedback and evaluation for research that is highly relevant to global priorities. For more information, see the above links or reach out to David Reinstein at theunjournal@gmail.com
I studied psychology and completed a PhD in social psychology at The University of Queensland in Australia. Since 2018 I’ve been working at BehaviourWorks Australia at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia. This role is focused on applied behaviour science research and consulting with government departments and large organisations (corporate and non-profit). In 2019, I co-founded Ready Research with Peter Slattery and Michael Noetel. Ready is a volunteer group that conducts behaviour science research on EA-aligned topics.
What is your research area?
My focus at BehaviourWorks Australia with Monash University is on increasing the reach and impact of behaviour science evidence on policy and practice. This includes running a COVID-19 survey of behaviours and behavioural drivers for 18 months with the Victorian state government, creating a free evidence-based toolkit for scaling up behaviour change interventions, and identifying and prioritising behaviours relevant to net zero.
What are you planning to focus on in the future?
Outside of Monash, I’ve been trying to improve my knowledge and networks about the governance of advanced artificial intelligence (i.e, how we develop, deploy, and use AI) - here I’m especially interested interested in what we can learn from existing work on socio-technical transitions, policymaking under uncertainty, and how behaviour science can help make concrete progress on improving transitions to a world with advanced AI systems.
Do you want help or collaborators, if so who?
If you’re interested in working on AI safety in a non-technical or governance way, by applying behaviour science or other social science methods, I’d be keen to connect.
If you’re looking to conduct surveys or scale up behaviour change interventions, I’d be happy to help.
Do you want to share some of your work?
Here’s a poster I presented at an “AI showcase” at Monash University. Feel free to remix or adapt if useful. It tries to briefly make the case for (1) advanced AI will have significant opportunities and risks; (2) we should try and improve decisions and behaviours about AI; (3) behaviour science can offer methods to improve decisions and behaviours about AI.
Here’s a draft of an EA forum post I wrote stepping out why I think behaviour science can help AI governance. It also includes a worked example. I’d be happy to receive any feedback or talk about it some more.
The EA Behavioral Science Newsletter #7 (December 2022)
We recently released the seventh edition of the EA Behavioral Science Newsletter.
Each newsletter curates papers, forum posts, reports, podcasts, resources, funding opportunities, events, jobs and research profiles that are relevant to the effective altruism and behavioral science community.
We have 731 subscribers and average 36 new subscribers per month.
You can read the newsletter in your browser or below.
December 2022 (#7)
Psychology for Effective Altruism Facebook group
Researcher directory and Slack [researchers only]
Subscribe to the newsletter
Suggest feedback or content
Volunteer to support the newsletter
đź“– 14 publications
đź“ť 10 preprints & articles
đź’¬ 10 forum posts
🎧/​🎦 4 podcasts & videos
đź’° 1 funding opportunity
đź’Ľ 2 job & volunteering opportunities
đź“… 4 events
👨‍🔬 Alexander Saeri profiled
Beliefs about humanity, not higher power, predict extraordinary altruism
P. Amormino, K. O’Connell, K.M. Vekaria, E.L. Robertson, L.B. Meena & A.A. Marsh
Social and Personality Psychology Compass (2022)
---
Using a rare sample of altruistic kidney donors (n = 56, each of whom had donated a kidney to a stranger) and demographically similar controls (n = 75), we investigated how beliefs about human nature correspond to extraordinary altruism. Extraordinary altruists were less likely than controls to believe that humans can be truly evil. Results persisted after controlling for trait empathy and religiosity. Belief in pure good was not associated with extraordinary altruism. We found no differences in the religiosity and spirituality of extraordinary altruists compared to controls. Findings suggest that highly altruistic individuals believe that others deserve help regardless of their potential moral shortcomings. Results provide preliminary evidence that lower levels of cynicism motivate costly, non-normative altruism toward strangers.
Harnessing the Power of Communication and Behavior Science to Enhance Society’s Response to Climate Change
Edward W. Maibach, Sri Saahitya Uppalapati, Margaret Orr & Jagadish Thaker
Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences (2022)
---
A science-based understanding of climate change and potential mitigation and adaptation options can provide decision makers with important guidance in making decisions about how best to respond to the many challenges inherent in climate change. In this review we provide an evidence-based heuristic for guiding efforts to share science-based information about climate change with decision makers and the public at large. Well-informed decision makers are likely to make better decisions, but for a range of reasons, their inclinations to act on their decisions are not always realized into effective actions. We therefore also provide a second evidence-based heuristic for helping people and organizations change their climate change–relevant behaviors, should they decide to. These two guiding heuristics can help scientists and others harness the power of communication and behavior science in service of enhancing society’s response to climate change.
Many Earth scientists seeking to contribute to the climate science translation process feel frustrated by the inadequacy of the societal response. Here we summarize the social science literature by offering two guiding principles to guide communication and behavior change efforts. To improve public understanding, we recommend simple, clear messages, repeated often, by a variety of trusted and caring messengers. To encourage uptake of useful behaviors, we recommend making the behaviors easy, fun, and popular.
Sure-thing vs. probabilistic charitable giving: Experimental evidence on the role of individual differences in risky and ambiguous charitable decision-making
Philipp Schoenegger & Miguel Costa-Gomes
PLOS ONE (2022)
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Charities differ, among other things, alongside the likelihood that their interventions succeed and produce the desired outcomes and alongside the extent that such likelihood can even be articulated numerically. In this paper, we investigate what best explains charitable giving behaviour regarding charities that have interventions that will succeed with a quantifiable and high probability (sure-thing charities) and charities that have interventions that only have a small and hard to quantify probability of bringing about the desired end (probabilistic charities). We study individual differences in risk/​ambiguity attitudes, empathy, numeracy, optimism, and donor type (warm glow vs. pure altruistic donor type) as potential predictors of this choice.
We conduct a money incentivised, pre-registered experiment on Prolific on a representative UK sample (n = 1,506) to investigate participant choices (i) between these two types of charities and (ii) about one randomly selected charity. Overall, we find little to no evidence that individual differences predict choices regarding decisions about sure-thing and probabilistic charities, with the exception that a purely altruistic donor type predicts donations to probabilistic charities when participants were presented with a randomly selected charity in (ii). Conducting exploratory equivalence tests, we find that the data provide robust evidence in favour of the absence of an effect (or a negligibly small effect) where we fail to reject the null. This is corroborated by exploratory Bayesian analyses. We take this paper to be contributing to the literature on charitable giving via this comprehensive null-result in pursuit of contributing to a cumulative science.
Other publications
The relationship between attitudes to human rights and to animal rights is partially mediated by empathy, Anna Stone, The Journal of Social Psychology (2022)
Nonprofit Scandals: A Systematic Review and Conceptual Framework, Cassandra M. Chapman, Matthew J. Hornsey, Nicole Gillespie & Steve Lockey, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (2022)
Are Fear Campaigns Effective for Increasing Adherence to COVID-Related Mitigation Measures?, Bethany Richmond, Louise Sharpe & Rachel E. Menzies, International Journal of Behavioral Medicine (2022)
Eliciting empathetic drives to prosocial behavior during stressful events, Nicola Grignoli, Chiara Filipponi & Serena Petrocchi, Frontiers in Psychology (2022)
I will donate later! A field experiment on cell phone donations to charity, Toke R. Fosgaarda & Adriaan R. Soetevent, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2022)
I Own, So I Help Out: How Psychological Ownership Increases Prosocial Behavior, Ata Jami, Maryam Kouchaki & Francesca Gino, Journal of Consumer Research (2022)
Does stress make us more—or less—prosocial? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of acute stress on prosocial behaviours using economic games, Jonas P. Nitschke, Paul A.G. Forbes & Claus Lamm, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews (2022)
Review: Do green defaults reduce meat consumption?, Johanna Meier, Mark A. Andor, Friederike C. Doebbe, Neal R. Haddaway & Lucia A. Reisch, Food Policy (2022)
How prosocial behaviors are maintained in China: The relationship between communist authority and prosociality, Jing Sheng et al., Frontiers in Psychology (2022)
Donor recognition: A double-edged sword in charitable giving, Jun Luo & Guanlin Gao, Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing (2022)
The impact of product name on consumer responses to meat alternatives, Tian Ye, Anna S. Mattila & Shanshan Dai, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (2022)
Quantifying the Persuasive Returns to Political Microtargeting, Ben M. Tappin, Chloe Wittenberg, Luke Hewitt, Adam Berinsky & David Rand (2022)
Things could be better, Adam Mastroianni & Ethan Ludwin-Peery (2022)
Poor but not by choice(s): The persistence of cognitive biases across economic groups, Kai Ruggeri et al. (2022)
Virtual Reality Intervention Reduces Dietary Footprint: Implications for Environmental Communication in the Metaverse, Adéla Plechatá, Thomas Morton, Federico J.A. Perez-Cueto & Guido Makransky (2022)
Differential Responses to Vegetarian Appeals, Luke Smillie, Matthew Ruby, Nicholas Poh-Jie Tan, Liora Stollard & Brock Bastian (2022)
The Pandemic Uncovered Ways to Speed Up Science, Saloni Dattani, Wired (2022)
Cross-cultural perceptions of rights for future generations, Eric MartĂnez & Christoph Winter, Legal Priorities Project (2022)
Chinese Consumers’ Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare: Behaviors, Beliefs, And Responses To Messaging, Jo Anderson, Faunalytics (2022)
Public Opinion for Animal Rebellion’s protest campaign, Sam Glover & James Ozden, Social Change Lab (2022)
We all teach: here’s how to do it better, Michael Noetel
Concrete actions to improve AI governance: the behaviour science approach, Alexander Saeri
Does the US public support radical action against factory farming in the name of animal welfare? Neil Dullaghan
List of Interventions for Improving Institutional Decision-Making, Tao Burga
How to change a system from the inside, Sam Hilton
VIVID: A new organisation aspiring to scale effective self-improvement & reflection, Gidi Kadosh
Introducing the Animal Advocacy Bi-Weekly Digest (Nov 4 - Nov 18), James Ozden & Sharang Phadke
Introducing Effective Peer Support, Inga Grossmann
High-Impact Psychology (HIPsy): Piloting a Global Network, Inga Grossmann
Survey: Will Evidence-Backed Management Practices Increase Your Impact? Lorenzo GallĂ & Inga Grossmann
Effective Psychotherapy, Thomas Blank, EAGxBerlin 2022
Biosecurity: A Governance Perspective, Tessa Alexanian, EAGxBerlin 2022
How to form habits effectively, Spencer Greenberg & Jim Davies, Clearer Thinking podcast
How to apply behavioural science in charities and nonprofits, Luke K. Freeman, The Brainy Business Podcast
The “Unjournal”; is offering an “Impactful Research Prize” ($2500 and $1000) for submissions. They also provide journal-independent feedback and evaluation for research that is highly relevant to global priorities. For more information, see the above links or reach out to David Reinstein at theunjournal@gmail.com
Open Philanthropy is funding academics for the development of EA-adjacent university courses and providing early-career funding for individuals interested in improving the long-term future
A list of EA funding opportunities by Effective Thesis
See EA Funds for other opportunities
Postdoc opportunities with Nadira Faber (closes 11/​01/​23)
Help write three books on effective altruism with Gilad Feldman and students
For opportunities to work on animal welfare research:
Animal Advocacy Careers
Effective Animal Activism talent database
See the 80,000 Hours Job board, and the Effective Altruism Job Postings Facebook group for EA job opportunities
See Habit Weekly’s jobs board for behavioural science job opportunities
See the Effective Thesis website for coaching, research, and supervision opportunities; sign up for their research opportunities newsletter
See the EA Opportunity Board for volunteering, internship, job opportunities, and more
EA Africa Residency Fellowship—Tanzania January to March 2023
EAGxLatinAmerica 2023 6 – 8 January 2023
EAGxIndia 2023 13 – 15 January 2023
EA Global: Bay Area 2023 24 – 26 February 2023
See the EA Global website for future EAG events
See the EA Forum’s Events page
What is your background?
I studied psychology and completed a PhD in social psychology at The University of Queensland in Australia. Since 2018 I’ve been working at BehaviourWorks Australia at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia. This role is focused on applied behaviour science research and consulting with government departments and large organisations (corporate and non-profit). In 2019, I co-founded Ready Research with Peter Slattery and Michael Noetel. Ready is a volunteer group that conducts behaviour science research on EA-aligned topics.
What is your research area?
My focus at BehaviourWorks Australia with Monash University is on increasing the reach and impact of behaviour science evidence on policy and practice. This includes running a COVID-19 survey of behaviours and behavioural drivers for 18 months with the Victorian state government, creating a free evidence-based toolkit for scaling up behaviour change interventions, and identifying and prioritising behaviours relevant to net zero.
What are you planning to focus on in the future?
Outside of Monash, I’ve been trying to improve my knowledge and networks about the governance of advanced artificial intelligence (i.e, how we develop, deploy, and use AI) - here I’m especially interested interested in what we can learn from existing work on socio-technical transitions, policymaking under uncertainty, and how behaviour science can help make concrete progress on improving transitions to a world with advanced AI systems.
Do you want help or collaborators, if so who?
If you’re interested in working on AI safety in a non-technical or governance way, by applying behaviour science or other social science methods, I’d be keen to connect.
If you’re looking to conduct surveys or scale up behaviour change interventions, I’d be happy to help.
Do you want to share some of your work?
Here’s a poster I presented at an “AI showcase” at Monash University. Feel free to remix or adapt if useful. It tries to briefly make the case for (1) advanced AI will have significant opportunities and risks; (2) we should try and improve decisions and behaviours about AI; (3) behaviour science can offer methods to improve decisions and behaviours about AI.
Here’s a draft of an EA forum post I wrote stepping out why I think behaviour science can help AI governance. It also includes a worked example. I’d be happy to receive any feedback or talk about it some more.
Here is a preprint manuscript (under review) describing factors that influence successful scale up of behaviour change interventions. You can also use the toolkit we created.
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You can contact Alexander at alexander@aksaeri.com
Want to be profiled? Submit a profile here
Psychology for Effective Altruism Facebook group
Researcher directory and Slack [researchers only]
Subscribe to the newsletter
Suggest feedback or content
Volunteer to support the newsletter
Creators:
Peter Slattery with help from Kai Windle, Rebecca Murerwa and Ania Szmuksta.
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