Training Effective Altruism

Abstract

Randomizing different schools of thought –via a 3 months-long training– finds that training deputy ministers in effective altruism renders 0.4-0.6 sigma greater altruism. Treated ministers increased mentalizing of others: blood donations doubled, but only when blood banks requested their exact blood type. Perspective-taking in strategic dilemmas improved. Orphanage visits and volunteering in impoverished schools also increased. We are also able to trace the impact of the training on their policymaking: one year after training, amid official duties, ministers were 50-100% more likely to choose social policies and recommend over 4-fold additional funding for them. Our unique experimental design allows us to pin the mechanism driving our results: using a book lottery, we show the causal mediating channel to be increased demand to learn about empathy. Overall, our results underscore that effective altruism may be a parsimonious foundation for formation of prosociality, even impacting the behavior of adults in the field and their high-stakes policymaking.