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How Effective Altruism Can Help Psychologists Maximize Their Impact EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM IN PSYCHOLOGY 1 How Effective Altruism Can Help Psychologists Maximize Their Impact Izzy Gainsburg1, Shiva Pauer2, Nawal Abboub3, Eamon T. Aloyo4, Jean-Christophe Mourrat5, Alejandrina Cristia3 1 Ross School of Business, University of Michigan 2 Department of Social Psychology, University of Amsterdam 3 Department of Cognitive Studies, Paris Sciences et Lettres University 4 Institute for Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University 5 Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University Author Note IG acknowledges the Ross School of Business. AC acknowledges the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-17-CE28-0007 LangAge, ANR-16-DATA-0004 ACLEW, ANR-17-EURE-0017); and the J. S. McDonnell Foundation Understanding Human Cognition Scholar Award. We have no known conflict of interests to disclose. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Izzy Gainsburg, Ross School of Business, 701 Tappan Avenue, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Contact: [email protected] EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM IN PSYCHOLOGY 2 Abstract Although many psychologists are interested in making the world a better place through their work, they are often unable to have the impact that they would like. Here, we suggest that both individuals and psychology as a field can better improve human welfare by incorporating ideas from Effective Altruism, a growing movement whose members aim to do the most good by using science and reason to inform their efforts. In this paper, we first provide a brief introduction to Effective Altruism and review important principles that can be applied to how psychologists approach their careers, such as the ITN framework (Importance, Tractability, and Neglectedness). Next, we review how effective altruism can inform how individuals approach their roles as teachers, clinicians, researchers, mentors, and participants in the non-academic world. Finally, we close with a discussion of ideas for how psychology, as a field, can increase its positive impact. By applying insights from effective altruism to psychological science, we aim to integrate new theoretical frameworks into psychological science, stimulate new areas of research, start a discussion on how psychology can maximize its impact, and inspire the psychology community to do the most good. EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM IN PSYCHOLOGY 3 Psychologists often want to help others and make the world a better place through their work. In fact, this may represent the primary reason people choose to study and practice psychology (Farber at al., 2005; Huynh & Rhodes, 2011; Stewart et al., 2005). There are seemingly countless ways psychologists try to improve the world. Frequently, our work tries to increase good things, such as happiness, volunteering, charitable giving, collective action, school performance, and pro-environmental behavior. Likewise, psychologists often attempt to reduce bad things, such as discrimination, violence, poverty, and mental illness. And yet, we do not reliably and meaningfully achieve this goal as often as we would like. We are often troubled by apparently conflicting goals, including having a positive impact, a successful career and work-life balance. Moreover, when we focus on doing good, we feel tugged by many potential causes, including increasing diversity in science, adapting to and/or fighting against climate change, and many others. And if we do zoom in one specific cause, things can still go wrong. Many published psychology findings do not replicate (OSF, 2015); widely used pharmaceutical drugs and therapies do not outperform placebos (Kirsch et al., 2008); our desired effects are often short-lived (Frey & Rogers, 2014); and our best intentioned efforts, from communicating scientific findings (Lewis & Wai, 2021) to developing behavioral interventions (Osman et al., 2020), can backfire and have unintended negative consequences. It is difficult to have a positive impact on a world as complex as ours. We believe that psychologists can better accomplish their goal of having a positive impact on the world by considering ideas from effective altruism (EA), a social movement that examines how to “do good better” by applying science and reason to our altruistic efforts (MacAskill, 2015). In what follows we provide a brief overview of EA, review overlaps with psychology, and suggest how EA can inform us in the many different roles we occupy. 2 Introduction to EA EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM IN PSYCHOLOGY 4 2.1 What is Effective Altruism? At the broadest level, EA is a social movement of diverse people united by a common goal: finding ways to do the most good in the world with one's limited resources by using high-quality evidence and careful reasoning (MacAskill, 2015; see Table 1 for key terms and Table 2 for additional resources). Table 1: Definitions of key terms and concepts Concept Definition Effective altruism A social movement that emphasizes using high-quality evidence and careful reasoning to do the most good in the world. ITN Framework A framework for evaluating the most impactful problems and causes to address. Importance (I) refers to the scale of the problem; Tractability (T) refers to how solvable the problem is; Neglectedness (N) refers to the extent to which the problem is already receiving resources (ranging from under-resourced to oversaturated). Counterfactual considerations Individuals could maximize their impact by considering the impact of alternative decisions. Counterfactual considerations include opportunity costs (i.e., the relative impact of the best alternative action) and replaceability (i.e., whether one's impact would be replaced by others'). Personal fit People can have the most impact in their careers by finding a job in which they excel Table 2: Notable Effective Altruism resources Resource Title General audience book Doing Good Better by William MacAsklill General information Effective Altruism (effectivealtruism.org) Getting involved https://www.effectivealtruism.org/get-involved/ Giving communities One for the world (https://www.1fortheworld.org/); Giving what we can (givingwhatwecan.org); Career information 80,000 hours (80000hours.org) EA FAQ effectivealtruism.org/faqs-criticism-objections EA teaching resources https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Y8mBXCKmkS9eBokhG/ea-syllabi-a nd-teaching-materials Advanced discussions Effective altruism: Philosophical issues (Greaves & Pummer, 2019) For EA, “altruism” simply means having a positive impact on the world, broadly defined, which can include actions that are prototypically altruistic (e.g., charitable donations) and actions that are not as prototypically altruistic (e.g., working in cybersecurity). For EA, this positive impact need not come at an overall cost to the self, and effective EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM IN PSYCHOLOGY 5 altruists are asked to take into account their own needs, including avoiding burn-out and social isolation. The motivation to be “effective” starts with the idea that, for many people, it is preferable for an altruistic act to have its intended positive effect (vs. no effect or a negative effect), and if possible, a large (vs. small) effect. Although there are no silver bullets, research does indicate that some efforts to help the world are much more impactful than others. For instance, the most effective global public health interventions are 60 times more effective than those at the median and 15,000 times more effective than the least effective interventions (Ord, 2013). Thus, for those motivated to increase their positive impact on the world, there is often a tremendous opportunity to do so. At the same time, the most effective ways of doing good are not always obvious, intuitive, certain, or constant across time, space, or individual actors. Thus, effective altruists rely on empirical research and thorough analysis to choose the most effective actions, to which we turn. 2.2 The Methods of Effective Altruism No one is born into the world knowing which global problem is the most impactful to address or which charity saves the most lives per dollar. In EA, such choices are made using evidence and reasoning, as laid out in this section. 2.2.1 Considering costs and effects. Take the example of someone wanting to prevent HIV-related death. As a first step, they would gather empirical research on the effectiveness of different HIV treatments and interventions and compare their relative effectiveness and costs. When possible, effectiveness comparisons use standardized measures of welfare such as quality adjusted life years or disability adjusted life years (QALYs and DALYs; Sassi, 2006).1 So, when comparing HIV treatments and interventions, if one learns 1 QALYs and DALYs are a way of measuring the degree to which a treatment improves health and saves lives. If someone is expected to live 75 years, but dies at birth, 75 QALYs are foregone. These metrics allow for comparison across interventions among humans. EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM IN PSYCHOLOGY 6 that one intervention (e.g., education for high-risk groups) saves roughly 26 QALYs per $1000 and another (surgical treatment for Kaposi’s Sarcoma) only saves .02 QALYs per $1000, they would favor the former over the latter given that it is over 1300 times more effective (Ord, 2013). In public health research, where measuring cost-effectiveness is relatively common, there are often large differences in cost-effectiveness among treatments (Ord, 2013). Although estimates of cost-effectiveness are less common in other fields (see IJzerman et al., 2020 for a discussion of cost-effectiveness in
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