Psychological barriers to effective altruism: An evolutionary perspective

Boosting the impact of charitable giving with donation bundling and micromatching

The most effective charities are hundreds of times more impactful than typical charities. However, most donors favor charities with personal/emotional appeal over effectiveness. We gave donors the option to split their donations between their personal favorite charity and an expert-recommended highly effective charity. This bundling technique increased donors' impact without undermining their altruistic motivation, boosting effective donations by 76%. An additional boost of 55% was achieved by offering matching donations with increasing rates for allocating more to the highly effective charity. We show further that matching funds can be provided by donors focused on effectiveness through a self-sustaining process of micromatching. We applied these techniques in a new online donation platform (GivingMultiplier.org), which fundraised more than $1.5 million in its first 14 months. While prior applied research on altruism has focused on the quantity of giving, the present results demonstrate the value of focusing on the effectiveness of altruistic behavior.

A Longitudinal Experimental Study Examining How and Whether Practicing Acts of Kindness Affects Materialism

(1) Background: Kindness interventions assist individuals in the pursuit of greater well-being. However, little is known about whether these interventions can decrease materialism. The current study tested how kindness interventions decrease materialism and external aspirations. Furthermore, we tested whether these interventions influence impulsive shopping. (2) Method: We randomly assigned 122 females to a three-week intervention of practicing acts of kindness or a neutral intervention (practicing acts related to studying). Before and after the interventions, all participants reported their life satisfaction, level of materialism, and internal and external aspirations. (3) Results: Among women practicing acts of kindness, materialism and life satisfaction did not change compared to the control group, but in both conditions, life satisfaction increased, and materialism decreased. However, we found that practicing kindness was associated with (a) an increase in aspiration affiliation, (b) a reduction in the intention to shop impulsively, (c) less focus on external aspirations, and (d) more focus on internal aspirations. (4) Conclusions: Although our results show that practicing kindness does not lead to a decrease in materialism, they suggest that focusing on increasing personal happiness might lead to such a decrease. Furthermore, our research contributes to the existing literature by demonstrating that kind women are less oriented toward materialistic values.