| Popis: |
People often fail to prioritize the cost-effectiveness of charities when donating. We propose that people donate ineffectively, in part, to avoid the reputational costs of deliberating about the cost-effectiveness of charities, rather than empathizing with the recipients of the donation. Across nine pre-registered studies conducted among US MTurk participants and effective altruists, we present two findings that are consistent with this claim. First, we find that “deliberators” are perceived as less moral and less desirable as social partners than “empathizers”. We show that this result holds across different experimental designs (between-subjects, within-subjects), moderating factors (targets of different genders, donations of different stakes), and paradigms (evaluating a survey respondent, evaluating a person donating to charity). We also rule out an alternative explanation to this finding (that the result is explained by a misunderstanding of what donating to the most cost-effective charity means). Second, we find that people correctly anticipate the negative reputational costs of deliberating. Namely, people are aware that deliberating about the cost-effectiveness of charities leads others to evaluate them as less moral and less desirable social partners. Taken together, our results are consistent with the possibility that there are disincentives for selecting charities based on deliberation about the cost-effectiveness of charities, since people are not socially rewarded for prioritizing charitable impact but are rewarded for possessing the moral traits that others perceive to be important, hence explaining why people donate ineffectively. We end by discussing implications and limitations of these findings. |
