Ethical Reasoning vs. Empathic Bias: A False Dichotomy?

Law, K. F., Amormino, P. et al.

(2023, September 5).

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2rt7y

Abstract

Does empathy necessarily impede equity in altruism? Emerging findings from cognitive and affective science suggest that rationality and empathy are mutually compatible, contradicting some earlier, prominent arguments that empathy impedes equitable giving. We propose alternative conceptualizations of relationships among empathy, rationality, and equity, drawing on interdisciplinary advances in altruism research.

Here is my summary: 

This article discusses the relationship between ethical reasoning and empathic bias. Ethical reasoning is the process of using logic and reason to make moral decisions. Empathic bias is the tendency to make moral decisions that are influenced by our emotions and our personal relationships with the people involved.

The article argues that these two concepts are often seen as being in opposition to each other, but that this is a false dichotomy. Both ethical reasoning and empathic bias are important for making moral decisions. Ethical reasoning allows us to think about the broader implications of our decisions, while empathic bias allows us to connect with the individuals who are affected by our decisions.

The article concludes by suggesting that we should strive to use both ethical reasoning and empathic bias in our moral decision-making. By doing so, we can make more informed and compassionate decisions.

This article demonstrates that the Ethical Acculturation Model is not widely known by researchers.  The EAM stresses the professional's ability to integrate their own professional obligations and norms with their personal beliefs, values, and morality. Only through blending these important components can individuals resolve complex ethical/moral dilemmas.

Moral Future-Thinking: Does the Moral Circle Stand the Test of Time?

Law, K. F., Syropoulos, S., et al. (2023, August 10). 

PsyArXiv

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/c75ny

Abstract

The long-term collective welfare of humanity may lie in the hands of those who are presently living. But do people normatively include future generations in their moral circles? Across four studies conducted on Prolific Academic (N Total=823), we find evidence for a progressive decline in the subjective moral standing of future generations, demonstrating decreasing perceived moral obligation, moral concern, and prosocial intentions towards other people with increasing temporal distance. While participants generally tend to display present-oriented moral preferences, we also reveal individual differences that mitigate this tendency and predict pro-future outcomes, including individual variation in longtermism beliefs and the vividness of one’s imagination. Our studies reconcile conflicting evidence in the extant literature on moral judgment and future-thinking, shed light on the role of temporal distance in moral circle expansion, and offer practical implications for better valuing and safeguarding the shared future of humanity.

Here's my summary:

This research investigates whether people normatively include future generations in their moral circles. The authors conducted four studies with a total of 823 participants, and found evidence for a progressive decline in the subjective moral standing of future generations with increasing temporal distance. This suggests that people generally tend to display present-oriented moral preferences.

However, the authors also found individual differences that mitigate this tendency and predict pro-future outcomes. These factors include individual variation in longtermism beliefs and the vividness of one's imagination. The authors also found that people are more likely to include future generations in their moral circles when they are primed to think about them or when they are asked to consider the long-term consequences of their actions.

The authors' findings reconcile conflicting evidence in the extant literature on moral judgment and future-thinking. They also shed light on the role of temporal distance in moral circle expansion and offer practical implications for better valuing and safeguarding the shared future of humanity.

Overall, the research paper provides evidence that people generally tend to prioritize the present over the future when making moral judgments. However, the authors also identify individual factors and contextual conditions that can promote moral future-thinking. These findings could be used to develop interventions that encourage people to consider the long-term consequences of their actions and to take steps to protect the well-being of future generations.

Psychological barriers to effective altruism: An evolutionary perspective

Bastian, J. & van Vugt, M.

Current Opinion in Psychology

Available online 17 September 2021

Abstract

People usually engage in (or at least profess to engage in) altruistic acts to benefit others. Yet, they routinely fail to maximize how much good is achieved with their donated money and time. An accumulating body of research has uncovered various psychological factors that can explain why people’s altruism tends to be ineffective. These prior studies have mostly focused on proximate explanations (e.g., emotions, preferences, lay beliefs). Here, we adopt an evolutionary perspective and highlight how three fundamental motives—parochialism, status, and conformity—can explain many seemingly disparate failures to do good effectively. Our approach outlines ultimate explanations for ineffective altruism and we illustrate how fundamental motives can be leveraged to promote more effective giving.

Summary and Implications

Even though donors and charities often highlight their desire to make a difference in the lives of others, an accumulating body of research demonstrates that altruistic acts are surprisingly ineffective in maximizing others’ welfare. To explain ineffective altruism, previous investigations have largely focused on the role of emotions, beliefs, preferences, and other proximate causes. Here, we adopted an evolutionary perspective to understand why these proximate mechanisms evolved in the first place. We outlined how three fundamental motives that likely evolved because they helped solve key challenges in humans’ ancestral past—parochialism, status, and conformity—can create psychological barriers to effective giving. Our framework not only provides a parsimonious explanation for many proximate causes of ineffective giving, it also provides an ultimate explanation for why these mechanisms exist.

Although parochialism, status concerns, and conformity can explain many forms of ineffective giving, there are additional causes that we did not address here. For example, many people focus too much on overhead costs when deciding where to donate. Everyday altruism is multi-faceted: People donate to charity, volunteer, give in church, and engage in a various random acts of kindness. These diverse acts of altruism likely require diverse explanations and more research is needed to understand the relative importance of different psychological factors for explaining different forms of altruism. Moreover, of the three fundamental motives reviewed here, conformity to social norms has probably received the least attention when it comes to explaining ineffective altruism. While there is ample evidence showing that social norms affect the decision of whether and how much to donate, more research is needed to understand how social norms influence the decision of where to donate and how they can lead to ineffective giving.

The info is here.

Virtues for Real-World Utilitarians

Schubert, S., & Caviola, L. (2021, August 3)

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/w52zm

Abstract

Utilitarianism says that we should maximize aggregate well-being, impartially considered. But utilitarians that try to apply this principle will encounter many psychological obstacles, ranging from selfishness to moral biases to limits to epistemic and instrumental rationality. In this chapter, we argue that utilitarians should cultivate a number of virtues that allow them to overcome the most important of these obstacles. We select virtues based on two criteria. First, the virtues should be impactful: they should greatly increase your impact (according to utilitarian standards), if you acquire them. Second, the virtues should be acquirable: they should be psychologically realistic to acquire. Using these criteria, we argue that utilitarians should prioritize six virtues: moderate altruism, moral expansiveness, effectiveness-focus, truth-seeking, collaborativeness, and determination. Finally, we discuss how our suggested list of virtues compares with standard conceptions of utilitarianism, as well as with common sense morality.

Conclusions 

We have suggested six virtues that utilitarians should cultivate to overcome psychological obstacles to utilitarianism and maximize their impact in the real world: moderate altruism, moral expansiveness, effectiveness-focus,  truth-seeking,  collaborativeness,  and  determination.  To  reiterate,  this  list  is tentative, and should be seen more as a starting point for further research than as a well-consolidated set of findings. It is plausible that some of our suggested virtues should be refined, and that we should add further  virtues  to  the  list.  We  hope  that  it  should  inspire  a  debate  among  philosophers  and psychologists about what virtues utilitarians should prioritize the most.

A pdf is here.

Biased Benevolence: The Perceived Morality of Effective Altruism Across Social Distance

Law, K. F., Campbell, D., & Gaesser, B. 

(2019, July 11). 

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/qzx67

Abstract

Is altruism always morally good, or is the morality of altruism fundamentally shaped by the social opportunity costs that often accompany helping decisions? Across five studies, we reveal that, although helping both socially closer and socially distant others is generally perceived favorably (Study 1), in cases of realistic tradeoffs in social distance for gains in welfare where helping socially distant others necessitates not helping socially closer others with the same resources, helping is deemed as less morally acceptable (Studies 2-5). Making helping decisions at a cost to socially closer others also negatively affects judgments of relationship quality (Study 3) and in turn, decreases cooperative behavior with the helper (Study 4). Ruling out an alternative explanation of physical distance accounting for the effects in Studies 1-4, social distance continued to impact moral acceptability when physical distance across social targets was matched (Study 5). These findings reveal that attempts to decrease biases in helping may have previously unconsidered consequences for moral judgments, relationships, and cooperation.

General Discussion

When judging the morality of altruistic tradeoffs in social distance for gains in welfare advocated by the philosophy and social movement of effective altruism, we find that the perceived morality of altruism is graded by social distance. People consistently view socially distant altruism as less morally acceptable as the person not receiving help becomes socially closer to the agent helping. This suggests that whereas altruism is generally evaluated as morally praiseworthy, the moral calculus of altruism flexibly shifts according to the social distance between the person offering aid and the people in need. Such findings highlight the empirical value and theoretical importance of investigating moral judgments situated in real-world social contexts.

The research is here.

Why it’s a bad idea to break the rules, even if it’s for a good cause

Robert Wiblin
80000hours.org
Originally posted March 20, 2018

How honest should we be? How helpful? How friendly? If our society claims to value honesty, for instance, but in reality accepts an awful lot of lying – should we go along with those lax standards? Or, should we attempt to set a new norm for ourselves?

Dr Stefan Schubert, a researcher at the Social Behaviour and Ethics Lab at Oxford University, has been modelling this in the context of the effective altruism community. He thinks people trying to improve the world should hold themselves to very high standards of integrity, because their minor sins can impose major costs on the thousands of others who share their goals.

In addition, when a norm is uniquely important to our situation, we should be willing to question society and come up with something different and hopefully better.

But in other cases, we can be better off sticking with whatever our culture expects, both to save time, avoid making mistakes, and ensure others can predict our behaviour.

The key points and podcast are here.

Can generosity go too far?

By Julian Baggini
The New Statesman
Originally published on August 21, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

We have heard so many stories of misguided projects and misspent money over the years that surely the time has come to demand evidence that the charities we ­support are effective. But how do you measure whether a charity is effective? One answer would be to apply two tests: does it achieve its stated goal and does it do so as cost-efficiently as it can? A charity such as Guide Dogs might pass this test. But for effective altruists, in deciding whether to give to Guide Dogs, you ought to ask another question: could you get more altruistic bang for your buck by giving to something completely different instead?

They say you can. Guide Dogs UK says it costs £32,400 to train a guide dog and its owner and then another £12,800 “to support the working partnership”. In contrast, Singer says you can save someone from going blind in the developing world for between $20 and $100. “If you do the maths,” he writes, “you will see that the choice we face is to provide one person with a guide dog or prevent anywhere between 400 and 2,000 cases of blindness.”

The entire article is here.

The Logic of Effective Altruism

By Peter Singer
Boston Review
Originally posted July 6, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Effective altruism is based on a very simple idea: we should do the most good we can. Obeying the usual rules about not stealing, cheating, hurting, and killing is not enough, or at least not enough for those of us who have the good fortune to live in material comfort, who can feed, house, and clothe ourselves and our families and still have money or time to spare. Living a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place. Living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can.

Most effective altruists are millennials—members of the first generation to have come of age in the new millennium. They are pragmatic realists, not saints, so very few claim to live a fully ethical life. Most of them are somewhere on the continuum between a minimally acceptable ethical life and a fully ethical life. That doesn’t mean they go about feeling guilty because they are not morally perfect. Effective altruists don’t see a lot of point in feeling guilty. They prefer to focus on the good they are doing. Some of them are content to know they are doing something significant to make the world a better place. Many of them like to challenge themselves to do a little better this year than last year.

The entire article is here.