Thread by @Moshe_Hoffman

New paper (👇).

We present+test a functional explanation for why we are “ineffective altruists”.

Allow me to summarize the paper. And use it to highlight what we think is “the right way” to test ‘functional’ explanations & rule out purely ‘proximate’ accounts.

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https://twitter.com/naturehumbehav/status/1315699744514158592

By ‘proximate’ we just mean an explanation in terms of our psychology. An explanation of what we do in terms of what we think, feel, or want.

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For instance, a proximate account for why we give in not terribly effective ways would be:

The mental process involved in giving—say, mentally simulating a representative recipient of our gift—is insensitive to the impact of our gift.

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If we only imagine one representative recipient, we will fail to take into account the number of recipients our gift is helping.

That’s a proximate account for why we give ineffectively.

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Notice implicit in this account: we would give effectively *if not for* the peculiarities of our mental processes involved in giving

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In fact, often with proximate accounts, this implicit counterfactual goes unstated and untested.

All that is shown is that the proximate psychology *does yield* the puzzling behavior.

Not that it *has to*. Not that we *have to* rely on that proximate psychology.

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The key alternative—which usually isn’t even considered or mentioned:

The proximate psychology is serving an underlying, unconscious, function.

In the case of charitable giving, this might be maximizing social rewards. Which may not be responsive to efficacy.

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And when that underlying function doesn’t apply—when we aren’t trying to optimize social rewards, or when social rewards aren’t maximized by ignoring efficacy—a different proximate psychology will come online.

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In our opinion, this is precisely what ought to be checked before one accepts a proximate account:

Is the proximate actually just proxying for some underlying function, like maximizing social rewards.

And would the proximate shift if that underlying function weren’t there.

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Or is the proximate psychology rigid.

There whether or not there is the underlying function that originally lead to that proximate psychology.

And that underlying function not present when we see the puzzling-to-be-explained behavior.

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Psychologists very often presume the latter. But without actually showing it. It’s kind of the default interpretation. But not tested. That’s our main critique of much of the psychology literature.

So here we intended to test it. Allow me to try and explain how.

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The key is to look for cases where our proposed functional account—social rewards—don’t apply.

Well, when we make personal decisions—like savings decisions—we are not motivated by social rewards.

Likewise when giving to our kin.

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Of course, when giving to charities we are also not consciously motivated by social rewards. But the functional story is that social rewards shape our proximate psychology involved in giving. (The shaping happens because of learning or evolutionary processes.)

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So our first study reproduces the classic result:

Multiplying whatever subjects give to charity by a factor ranging from 1 to 10 doesn’t affect what they give.

But shows this result doesn’t apply to a comparable savings decision.

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We also reproduce another classic result showing we are insensitive to the number of people who would be saved. When those people are strangers.

But we are sensitive when they are family members.

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(We did best we could to make the savings and kin as similar to the charitable decisions as possible. But, in our opinion, the kind of contrasts needed to test these functional stories ALWAYS involve confounds. So best we can do is multiple studies w/ different confounds.)

To us, these are the key studies.

The unique predictions you get out of the functional account that you wouldn’t out of the proximate account.

And clear evidence that the proximate psychology isn’t as rigid as psychologists presumed.

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Next we go on to demonstrate that the proximate psychology, when it is activated, is serving the underlying function. in this case: maximizing social rewards, which do not respond to impact of your giving.

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To show this, we demonstrate that social rewards in fact do not respond to impact of your giving.

Namely, observers reward subjects more when they give then when they don’t, but ignored how much the gift, or lack thereof, would have been multiplied.

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You might wonder why observers aren’t motivated to take into account impact. We speculate this is b/c observers are motivated to reward what others will appreciate them for rewarding. But that can only include stuff that is commonly observable. Impact isn’t.

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This leads us to our last study. We provide some evidence for the above speculation by looking at other information, like impact, that’s unlikely to be commonly observed: how much you gave. And show social rewards are also relatively insensitive to that.

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So that’s our paper:

We showed...
-the proximate mechanism isn’t as rigid as usually thought.
-the proximate is serving a valuable function, since it fits how the social rewards work.

And as a bonus...
-some speculation+evidence for why the social rewards work that way

More generally this is how we think one *should* test functional accounts+rule out proximate accounts:

1) verify that the proximate is serving some underlying function.
2) find instances where that function does not apply. And show the proximate no longer applies as well.

Eom