Awareness of effective altruism

Most of the respondents did not know enough about effective altruism to discuss it with a friend.

Most respondents had not read key EA books or heard of major EA organizations (organization names were written out in full in the survey). This includes books by Peter Singer, who I believe has high name recognition in this community (I didn’t test this with a question). GiveWell was recognized the most, with 116 people claiming to have heard of the organization.

Familiarity with EA books and organizations

I asked two questions about factual information at the intersection of effective altruism and international development. The first question came from this paper and asked:

“Some charities that help the world’s poorest people are more cost-effective than others. Cost-effectiveness (in this example here) is measured by the number of lives saved. A more cost-effective charity can save more lives than a less cost-effective charity can save with the same amount of money.

Among all the charities that help the world’s poorest people:

• Charity A has the highest level of cost-effectiveness
• Charity B has an average level of cost-effectiveness

How many times more cost-effective do you believe Charity A is in comparison to Charity B?”

I created the second question, which asked respondents to:

“Consider a charity whose programs are among the most cost-effective ways of saving the lives of children. In other words, thinking across all charities that currently exist, this one can save a child’s life for the smallest amount of money.

Roughly what do you think is the minimum amount of money that you would have to donate to this charity in order to expect that your money has saved the life of one child?”

The results are shown below, with the answers split by people who said that were or were not familiar enough with EA to discuss it with a friend. I show both the median answer to each question, and the share of people who picked answers that were within a factor of 10 lower or higher than the most likely true answers.

Currently, the best guess as to the correct answer to the charity question is on the order of 100x (see also). The cost to save a life is ball-parked by GiveWell at between 3000 and 5000 USD (see also). Lower credible estimates go as low as 530 USD for seasonal malaria chemoprevention. I am unaware of any credible estimate that is on the order of 50 USD.

The median respondent answered question 1 with a large under-estimation, an giving an answer that is typical of the public at large (see also). Most respondents gave answers under 10x. Respondents familiar with EA were about twice as likely to be within an order of magnitude of the most likely answer.

A similar situation held for the second question. The median respondent picked an answer of around 50 USD and most respondents gave a response that was less than 500 USD, which is approximately an order of magnitude under the best current guess. Respondents familiar with EA selected higher answers, but again their answers were still quite far from GiveWell’s estimate.

It should not be surprising that professors give answers that are similar to the public at large, as professors are experts in their research niches and most people in international development do not study these questions.

The last question I asked on this theme was which topics a professor would devote at least 30 minutes of class time to in an introduction to international development course. The topics of EA and moral philosophy were the least likely to be covered, by a large margin.

Frequency of topics covered in intro IDEV course

Personal beliefs

While most IDEV profs are not familiar with effective altruism, they tend to hold beliefs that are naturally quite compatible with effective altruism. For example, almost 80% either strongly agree or agree that “From a moral perspective, people should care about the well-being of all human beings on the planet equally; they should not favour the well-being of people who are especially close to them either physically or emotionally”.

Personal ethic beliefs

The vast majority also agree that “when considering whether or not to devote time or money to a cause, one should think not merely about whether one will do good but also about how much good one will do.”

Most professors gave to charity in the past year.

Of those that donated to charity in the past year, most of them donated at least once to a charity that works primarily in a low or middle income country.

When asked to select all factors that influenced which charities they chose to donate to, respondents overwhelmingly said that they selected charities based on personal connection to the cause.

Factors influencing how respondents selected charities

A similar pattern emerges when respondents are asked to select the most important single factor influencing their largest charity donation in the past year, with personal connections dominating the decision.

Most important factor influencing why respondents made their largest donation in the past year

One possible interpretation of the above charity results is that most IDEV professors give to charities in the countries where they have done research or policy work. These are low or middle-income countries, and by giving to charities whey they have personal connections they end up giving to charities working in poorer parts of the world.

Finally, I asked a a few questions about what drives people to choose research topics and some questions about personal impact and aid. When IDEV professors choose what topics to research their first priority is selecting interesting problems but a close second is choosing problems that they think can do in the world. There is a large gap between these top two factors and the bottom two factors of thinking the topic could be placed in a prestigious journal and ease of grant funding.

Think of the research topics that you are currently working on or have most recently finished. Why did you decide to work on these topics?

IDEV professors express optimism about their impact on the world and about the impact of their country’s aid on people in low-income countries. They also believe that researching and teaching IDEV content is important because the knowledge about IDEV helps people to do good.

Personal optimism

Opinions towards effective altruism

This section reports results from questions asked only of the 87 respondents (out of 351) who said that they knew enough about EA to discuss it with a friend. First, I asked a simple feeling thermometer question, where 0 means one feels as cold and negative as possible towards EA and 100 is as warm and positive as possible. Indifference is thus 50.

EA feeling thermometer

Fifty (indifference) was the largest single response category (21 respondents gave of answer of exactly 50), and most respondents scattered around 50 with a small tilt towards the warmer end of the range.

I also asked the professors who knew about EA if they thought the distribution of effort (among EAs focused on near-term global well-being) was optimally divided between micro and macro issues. I defined micro issues as those that are relatively easy to evaluate and theorize about, like the effects of distributing anti-malarial bed nets. Macro issues, like promoting economic growth in lower income countries, were harder to evaluate and theorize about but potentially much higher impact conditional on success. This micro/macro distinction maps quite well onto “structural change” concerns sometimes raised in EA circles.

Predicted and ideal distribution of (near-term) EA effort

The professors felt that EA focuses too much on micro issues and not enough on macro issues, with the optimal division of effort being something like a 50/50 split.