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The EA Behavioral Science Newsletter #5 (June 2022)
7 min read · Jun 1, 2022
We have just released the fifth edition of the EA Behavioral Science Newsletter.
Each newsletter curates papers, forum posts, reports, podcasts, resources, funding opportunities, events, jobs and research profiles that are relevant to the effective altruism and behavioral science community.
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| The EA Behavioral Science Newsletter |
June 2022 |
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| 📚 Summary |
📖 Eighteen publications 📝 Five preprints & articles 💬 Thirteen forum posts 🎧/🎦 Five podcasts/videos 💰 Three funding opportunities 💼 One job 🗓 One event 👨🔬 Samantha Kassirer profiled |
| 📖 Publications |
Humans first: Why people value animals less than humans Lucius Caviola, Stefan Schubert, Guy Kahane & Nadira S. Faber Cognition (2022) ---
People routinely give humans moral priority over other animals. Is such moral anthropocentrism based in perceived differences in mental capacity between humans and non-humans or merely because humans favor other members of their own species? We investigated this question in six studies (N = 2217). We found that most participants prioritized humans over animals even when the animals were described as having equal or more advanced mental capacities than the humans. This applied to both mental capacity at the level of specific individuals (Studies 1a-b) and at the level typical for the respective species (Study 2). The key driver behind moral anthropocentrism was thus mere species-membership (speciesism). However, all else equal, participants still gave more moral weight to individuals with higher mental capacities (individual mental capacity principle), suggesting that the belief that humans have higher mental capacities than animals is part of the reason that they give humans moral priority.
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Leveraging social cognition to promote effective climate change mitigation Mélusine Boon-Falleur, Aurore Grandin, Nicolas Baumard & Coralie Chevallier Nature Climate Change (2022) --- Effective climate change mitigation is a social dilemma: the benefits are shared collectively but the costs are often private. To solve this dilemma, we argue that we must pay close attention to the nature and workings of human cooperation. We review three social cognition mechanisms that regulate cooperation: norm detection, reputation management and fairness computation. We show that each of these cognitive mechanisms can stand in the way of pro-environmental behaviours and limit the impact of environmental policies. At the same time, the very same mechanisms can be leveraged as powerful solutions for an effective climate change mitigation. Human cooperation, which is essential for climate action, is shaped by the social cognition of individuals. This Review examines three mechanisms that play an important role in discouraging pro-environmental behaviours, but which can also provide effective solutions for collective action. |
The Good-on-Paper Effect: How the Decision Context Influences Virtuous Behavior Maferima Touré-Tillery & Lili Wang Marketing Science (2022) --- In a series of 10 studies, we find that people are more likely to make virtuous decisions on paper than on a digital device because they perceive choices on paper as more real (i.e., tangible, actual, and belonging to the physical rather than the virtual world) and hence as more self-diagnostic (i.e., representative of who they are). We first show people express more interest in donating and volunteering (Studies 1a and 1b), are more likely to donate (Study 2), and put more effort into helping a charitable cause (Study 3) when these choices occur on paper (versus tablet)—a pattern of decision making we label the good-on-paper effect. Study 4 extends these findings to book choices (highbrow versus lowbrow) and to a device interaction that closely mimics writing on paper (i.e., tablet with digital pen). In the context of volunteering decisions, we then provide evidence for the sequential mediating roles of perceptions of realness and self-diagnosticity in the good-on-paper effect (Study 5 and Studies 6a and 6b). Finally, we show that chronic (Study 7) and situational (Study 8) perceptions of self-diagnosticity moderate this effect in the contexts of environmental protection and food choices (healthy versus indulgent), respectively. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. |
| 📝 Preprints & articles |
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| 💬 Forum posts |
| 🎧/🎦 Audio-visual |
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| 💰 Funding |
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| 💼 Jobs & volunteering |
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| 🗓 Events |
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| 👨🔬 Researcher profile |
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What is your background?
What is your research area? Moral psychology and organization science
Do you want help or collaborators, if so who? Anyone interested in these research topics; especially those who have the bandwidth to lead projects. I’m also interested in learning from qualitative and big data social scientists, so if that’s you please reach out!
People Are Slow to Adapt to the Warm Glow of Giving Presentation: Donating or Volunteering: Which altruism feels more effective? [You can contact Samantha at [email protected]] --- Want to be profiled? Submit a profile here |
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