So this involves a bit of potentially tenuous evolutionary psychology, but I think part of what is going on here is that people are judging moral character based on what would have made sense to judge people on 10,000 years ago which is, is this person loyal to their friends (ie me), empathetic, helps the person in front of them without question, etc. 

I think it's important to distinguish between morality (what is right and wrong) from moral psychology (how do people think about what is right and wrong). On this account, buying animal products tells you that a person is a normal member of society, and hitting an animal tells you someone is cruel, not to be trusted, potentially psychopathic, etc.   

Hi Quila,

If I understand you correctly I think we broadly agree that people tend to use how someone acts to judge moral character. I think though this point is underappreciated in EA, as evidenced by the existence of this forum post. The question is 'why do people get so much more upset about hitting one horse than the horrors of factory farming', when clearly in terms of the badness of an act, factory farming is much worse. The point is that when people view a moral/immoral act, psychologically they are evaluating the moral character of the person, not the act in and of itself.

I think it was the first one. Well done for finding it!

I can't recall the paper, but I remember reading a paper in moral psychology that argues that on a psychological level, we think of morality in terms of 'is this person moral', not 'is this act moral'. We are trying to figure out if the person in front of us is trustworthy, loyal, kind, etc.

In the study, participants do say that a human experiencing harm is worse than an animal experiencing harm, but view a person who hits a cat as more immoral than a person who hits their spouse. I think what people are implicitly recoiling at is that the person who hits a cat is more likely to be a psychopath. 

I think this maps pretty well onto the example here, and the outrage of people's reactions. And to clarify, I think this explanation captures WHY people react the way they do in the descriptive sense. I don't think that's how people ought to react. 

I agree this is an important point I probably didn't discuss enough. Value drift is real, as is getting used to a high salary. 

I suspect that a strong community is one way to reduce this, but might be easier said than done depending on where someone lives.

Can you elaborate on why? Is it the career capital, direct impact, or something else altogether?

+1 as the person who writes the EA Australia newsletter

As one of the people who attended the course I can say it was really really good! It (hopefully) shouldn't come as a surprise that a course on how to facilitate better was very well facilitated. The sessions were practical, engaging, and I learned a lot. 

This is my way of saying if you have the opportunity to attend the course, or have Mike and Zan run it, I highly recommend you do! 

To add to this, the few times I've needed ops help I asked a question on the ops slack, and was then linked to a previous thread that discussed said issue at length, and found it very helpful.