Emotion, recency and virtue signalling - does it matter what drives charitable behaviour?

Things mentioned in this podcast:

• Amelia Roberts’ charity appeal
• Givewell’s top charities
• Forbes’ list of charities with the highest overheads
• Givewell’s critique of ‘mega-charities’
• Small and Loewenstein, Helping a Victim or Helping the Victim: Altruism and Identifiability
• The Guardian on emotive charity adverts

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing why we give to charity. Nick, why do we want to talk about this?

on the basis of cost-effectiveness what do you mean well let's say you want to save lives

with your pound actually there's a better better example drawn from the effective altruism society who who are the really they've they've looked there's a lot of information that they've looked at about which which charities are most cost-effective and they use the example of you know what if you it you can either donate a hundred pounds to a society in the US which give which gives guide dogs to the blind and you know it costs forty thousand dollars to to get a guide dog or you can fund an you know five operations somewhere in sub-saharan Africa which restore people's sight your hundred hundred dollars can buy you know one four hundredth of a guide dog or it can save five people's sight which of those is better right now you don't even need to worry about okay what's you know what's whether it's worth it it's not a value for money question what it is is i'm interested in helping blind people how can my hundred pounds be best used one four hundredth of a guide dog or five people who get their sight restored do you agree that the latter is probably the better option that's all cost effectiveness is it's like saying well how do we get the best charity bang for our bark okay uh

peter uh yeah just dip into the effective altruism bit a bit further there are there are a lot that the effective altruism is a very kind of purist uh ethos to how charities how how you should select giving to charities there are practical there are sort of practical derivations of that so one for one example is a charity called give well whose job it is to um i think they they both act as a broker for charitable donations so you give to give well uh they um then give money proportionally to a bunch of charities that they have assessed through some very decent detailed research about how effective they are in dealing with um whatever problem is they're dealing with and they have various metrics about how you know how they've reduced harm or they've saved lives but they also look into key things about charities like how corrupt are they or how how transparent and accountable are they and crucially how capable they are of dealing with more donations because some charities suffer when they get lots of donations they can't deal with all the money and they there's inefficiencies as a result so they so this if you if you want if you want to maximize the benefit that your donation gives gives well it's a good start the problem is though that your goals for what your what your charity money wants to do might be different you know it might not be i want to save lives it might be i want to save animals um so in which case give well will fall down because they you know they they value human life over animal life and that sort of thing yeah but i mean okay but the thing is though

that's all very well i mean that's that seems like a minor quibble to me because the problem is that even when given the opportunity to give cost effectively um people still don't right and when they're presented with like hypothetical choices between cost effective uh things which are less emotional and and uh you know in cost ineffective options which maybe just you know have a panda on the front they will go for the panda and there's a there's a famous um well it's relatively famous um experiment looking at this issue of sort of scope insensitivity that people don't you know there are literally orders of magnitude between the effectiveness of different ways you can give to charity um and um there was an experiment where people were asked how much they'd be willing to donate um if there had been an oil spill right and and you can help save birds by putting protective nets over the oil spill yeah i don't know how much this is true but the point is that that's that's the thing that people were asked and people were asked okay it's either going to affect two thousand birds twenty thousand birds or two hundred thousand birds right so different people were asked different numbers of birds and um basically people said the same they said they'd donate eighty dollars it's probably a lie but they you know they're probably but the point is that they didn't even moderate that to the number of birds um people like they just don't care they don't care how many birds it affects it's just oh it affects some bird somewhere so here's eighty dollars so you know i don't i don't think people even if they have a definite goal in mind there's no evidence that people give in a kind of way that attempts to maximize that so i'm i'm i mean i and i think people are giving to charity for all kinds of different reasons

so this is i think this is a fundamental problem that you guys have at um Aleph Insights right which is i mean and what what this as i understand what what you do at Aleph Insights is you provide consultancy on on on really what this podcast is about which is analysis and decision making how to get get better at those things right which is a rational approach however as we know you know we live in an irrational world and people are not rational um so you know you poor guys you're you're a voice crying in the wilderness okay so flipping it on its head you know i come a little bit from the background of sales and marketing and what you're sort of and what you're taught in that is let's say i've got this pandas stick a panda on it yeah let's say i've got this new wonderful microphone um the way not to sell it is to tell you all the facts and the figures well it might be the way to sell it to peter actually um all the facts exactly and you know how one you know and and all the data about how it's improved and and the you know the gigawatts and the amps and all this kind of business that's a big microphone talking gigawatts yeah okay i'm sold and um that's not the way to sell it to your audience the way to sell it is kind of like you know something along the lines of this mic will get you more sex basically yeah and make you look really beautiful and people will love you oh yeah and it is working for you and you don't when seeking

investment as a startup don't concentrate on why your thing's the best thing you know sell them like the sell sell the ethos of why what you do so apple don't say well we make really good phones and they're really nice and pretty and they said they say we are about connecting people we are design your life will be similar and we just happen to make phones yeah okay i agree i agree i agree

wait hold on before you come in so so this is the challenge i mean i don't think anyone would dispute what you're saying um but how do you get around that because people are always going to want to donate to a charity that's got their favorite fluffy animals i agree i agree with

some of your analysis here but i disagree with your analysis your your uh assumption about what's driving it right yeah i agree that people's behavior is sort of partly you know what how you describe in that you know people are motivated by by pandas and not by you know outcomes um but i don't i totally disagree when you said people are basically irrational right because if you ask people how much they would be willing to that's a general you know if it's like if if someone said to me how much would you you know accept to sell one of your books i might say well it depends on the book but you know 20 quid but if they said what about a thousand of your books i wouldn't still say 20 quid right and yet that's what we see in the way that people give to charity people are not irrational people are completely rational about they allocating resources when they are enjoying the benefit what we're talking about here is something else which is that you know people are giving a chucking money into a pot and they've got no idea what the benefits are most of the time when people give money to charity they don't follow up or care or research you know what impact is actually having um because i don't think people are giving to charity because they want or most people who give to charity don't do it because they want some outcome to get better um you know and i think it in a way it's rational of them to not care because it's not affecting them um if people really cared in inverted commas they would give money to the things that produce the best outcomes but the fact is that they don't care right they they don't really care about what they're giving money for they're giving money to charity for their own reasons yeah so and i think so i think they're being rational they're being rational but but the point is that it's rational in a sense in a narrow sense to not really care about the outcomes for people who aren't you

yeah i mean so the so the rhyming nick the the the story that you introduced us with what what what so there was a charity page that it was um it was the epilepsy society what was it was it a just giving just giving so yes the so i think that these just these new charity type websites the the crowdfunding kind of websites like just giving and go fund me etc are particularly vulnerable to a particular kind of uh driver for giving to charity which is that sort of instant gratification quick fix um i'm i'm feeling sad about my life because i hate my job and i'm stuck on the central line i'll quickly give five pounds of charity to make myself feel better kind of um mode of charitable giving rather than the more calculated you know i i have a month i don't personally but one that may have a sort of monthly sponsorship of a panda in in in the china in a chinese zoo and you get a little leaflet every month and it's kind of like a more enduring relationship with that with that giving um you're you're sort of more cycle more cognitively vested in it rather than just a quick fix like i need a cup of coffee kind of quick fix um but yeah so and i i thought that's interesting i'm not sure i've i couldn't find many many um figures to comparative figures the old-fashioned kind of charity versus these new charities about how vulnerable they are to fraud but there's been some fairly big ticket uh uh cases in relatively recent years where these go fund me websites types that have been used uh by fraudsters to extract lots of money a good example is the the case of uh it was um mrs uh uh maclure and the guy called johnny bobbitt who concocted a story johnny bobbitt was a homeless homeless man in in the states and they concocted a story whereby uh johnny bobbitt had sort of given this this maclure a twenty dollars or something to buy gas to get home because he'd lost her wallet an entirely fictional story but it took off massively it raised nearly just over uh four hundred thousand dollars um from people spotting it going oh it's a really nice story here's a few here's a few dollars um but it was entirely fictional so they but it is and this was all this all came to light and they've been prosecuted as a result um but the point is that so the the there was sort of the problems with the way that the money was spent and things that didn't actually go to uh johnny bobbitt but he did benefit from it um he was actually homeless and yet he was still convicted and went to jail um because of the story was wrong but the outcome is kind of what he's not homeless if he's in jail well that's true yeah but i mean he was he did he did benefit he got so he got money from from this uh but was he the initiator of it well i think i i'm not clear i think i think he and this mcclure woman and her partner at the time they they they sort of concocted the story and found this guy and convinced him to play along i quite like this actually this is this is a really good bit of fraud but they well it's a really bad bit of fraud because they got found out but um i think they got found out in classic fraud you know classic criminal ways because they started spending loads of money on big cars and stuff

suddenly johnny bonnet bobbitt turns up with a with a sort of you know a fur coat

and yeah yeah well actually johnny bobbitt didn't do so well out of the four hundred thousand dollars he he i think he got around seventy five thousand dollars that's still not bad but it's not one

minute you're homeless and then you've got 75k in the bank yeah so yeah fourteen and a half

thousand people were duped into donating to this charity um uh but yeah so that but i think

that i yeah but i mean look that probably does more good than all the money people give to oxfam i mean the problem is that you know when they've when they've tried to when people have tried to evaluate the impact of a lot of them you know charities that people give a lot of money to the big ones they can't really it's very hard to find any evidence that they're adding very much value the ones that the charitable causes which um you know where it appears you get the highest value uh are really boring things like uh like you know the classic malaria nets and um vitamin supplements right really cheap huge impact um deworming drugs so just deworming tablets providing those for people all over you know in sort of poverty stricken parts of the world or even flat out cash transfers like the easiest thing of all like you you give 20 pounds charity literally give that 20 pounds to someone poor somewhere adds more value than um you know than all of the stuff that

oxfam does yeah it wasn't the value that i was questioning in the johnny bobbitt case uh it was more like the i think the mode of the charity invites this what i'm saying though is that is

that we might feel a bit outraged by that but the point is that i sort of think well good on them i mean you know they've they've got people who feel good about giving money to charity they've all they've benefited three people have demonstrably benefited which is you know three more than none um and i think in a way it exposes i don't feel too bad about it because in a way i think it exposes people's you know people aren't giving to charity because there's a kind of you know coherent motive to it and i mean if you're gonna give to charity on the basis of oh that guy

looks you know i'll give him some money and i think these sites like go fund me is particularly uh successful in exactly that but where it's different is that the people are honest about their people are honest about their intent for the money so there are lots of people there are lots of go fund me saying oh fund my college education and or fund my buy me new car because i need to get to work and i can't afford a car and they and these things work yeah they work they work i mean they don't they obviously don't all work but there's some some sometimes they get picked up by the drivers for success um i'm not sure i've not looked into that but look i mean what it must

be about and it goes back to what i was talking about before it's about it's about um eliciting emotion from people right yeah probably being attractive and having it right like having a

backstory right um that yeah i think i think it boils down to like the going back again the the the just giving a very fun me a very social media driven kind of things and the successful ones go viral in in the and they and they go viral because they they tug on certain heartstrings they're they're uh they are particularly good at invading your brain as a meme because they they appeal to some particular emotion like guilt or anger or uh or or or charity um yeah that's and that's what causes them to spread and that's what causes them to be successful yeah

i think um that really is a sort of microcosm of what the evidence suggests summing it all together which is that people don't choose to give to charity on the basis of outcomes you know the evidence looking at the evidence of why it is that people are responsive to charity um or charitable pleas is the thing that really makes a difference is having a single identifiable beneficiary um rather than any amount of statistical information about about how how much good your donation will do um now that's so you know i think that's i know you mock us for being overly rational but i just i think you know there's no doubt that the world would be a better place here if people were motivated by by stats rather than by you know a sad looking a sad looking panda but having said all that um i do wonder if it's the case that actually you know people don't have a charity budget they don't go i've got i'm going to give a thousand pounds to charity let's find out what the best thing to give to it is um they go uh i was going to spend this on on booze and fags but i might give it to charity instead so is it it might be the case i'd probably say it almost certainly is the case that actually if if we kind of banned in some sense or discouraged people from doing charitable appeals on the basis of individuals probably all that would happen is those people would spend the money on booze and fags and not give it at all so i'm not i'm not

sure there is a an answer to this i mean and and the the the um there's a there's a long history in charity of the kind of opportunistic appeal thing so people standing with a bucket shaking a bucket at the train station yeah that's exactly what that is it's kind of it gets your attention and then shows you some it shows it plays on some emotion in your head and if they if people weren't shaking buckets then they wouldn't be you wouldn't ever see that charity it's you would you

would never have heard of it to think of to donate to it yeah i mean i just can't think you know what what a solution might be to even out these inefficiencies because you know you you mentioned something there um nick but also if you had you know a government centrally appointed charity distribution so it it just well we do that is the welfare state we've got that yeah but it doesn't but it okay but and the nhs no but hold on it doesn't it doesn't take up it doesn't exclude completely any kind of uh other charitable donations in fact no they're completely separate

because it's institutionalized charity that's what redistribution is i think fraser's saying

there are no such things as independently run charities it's all funneled through a government

yeah what what is no so what i'm saying is it's let's say let's say oh if we if we basically

nationalized all charity correct exactly that's what i'm saying and well we have nationalized most charity i mean let's just that's the welfare state is massive okay but then much bigger than

everyone's charity donations put together so yeah the uh uk charity sector is around 76 billion

yeah and nhs plus uh plus welfare payments are something like i'll be about three or four times

there so well so then you can a bit it seems um yeah i don't think i've given a suitable defense of of that thing about the nhs but anyway uh before we finish off um anything because there's

something i want to go on to peter yeah i think if if you are interested in effective altruism and giving maximizing the effect of your money then there are there are things out there to help you so read into effective altruism you might want to become a effective altruism extremist and go nuts and just give everything away that you don't need uh or you actually might just giving to charities that give well on other such sites recommend that's a good start but it's a sort of personal preference thing um but trust in analysis because if you want to maximize things there's

a rational way of doing it okay okay yeah yeah good so look um to finish this off i think there's an obvious question to ask here is do you don't donate to charity and if so which one uh or ones

uh nick yeah uh well i don't like to talk about it obviously but you like to hide your light under but that's because i don't give any money to charity now i could come up i could construct a print some kind of you know um attempt to a principle defense of this um but i i don't really have one other than to say that i don't it doesn't i don't think it makes sense to suggest that people ought to give money to charity like if if we were to say you ought to give money to charity and you ought to feel bad if you don't then then the logical conclusion is you should give everything you have away because there's always someone poorer than you um i don't think that's the case i don't think the world would be better if if that was a moral um rule and as we talked about earlier i mean i do i pay uh tax and i've been paying tax for 20 years and that is doing a hell of a lot of good you know that that is that's we have institutionalized charity in the uk whatever i if i decide to put a pound in an oxfam box that is a waste compared to you know the the good that the pound will do if i give it to the government to give it to someone else okay so i mean i'm i'm not i'm not making a big i'm not trying to sound like i have come i've this is the result of me having done some calculation that i think this is better it's just that i don't think i i don't think i have an obligation to give it's a shame because

in one fell swoop you've destroyed our listenership amongst banders um but the good news is there's not many of them around so it's not it's not too bad um peter what about you do you do do you

know nate not not to not to charities as you might think like i don't do animal charities etc but i do occasionally give money when they do when they've got a campaign on to the uh wiki foundation who run wikipedia it's a resource that i use all the time i'm a big fan of it um and i feel i you know chuck them a few quid every six months or so because it feels like i'm i'm using it so i should i should give some money to it to keep it going because if it ever went away that'd be a very sad thing and in the similar vein there are um lots of on lots of open source online tools that i use that there's an optional donation if it's something i use particularly regularly in order to support the developers who would otherwise potentially stop doing that and the thing would go away then i will donate to it so you might argue this very selfish approach to donation but it's a sort of voluntary payment for something that i yeah i find you but i mean

given that people are normally just paying for the for a warm glow which as we've discussed rather than because they actually care about the outcomes i wouldn't feel too bad about that and just so peter doesn't get all the virtue points at some point that i do all that as well i've got a bunch of uh of page of sort of patreon um people who i who i give money to and um and of course most significantly board game geek the best website on the internet so i'm always always donate to

them every year oh warming the cockles of my heart yeah um yeah no i used to have a donation set up to the red cross just uh because i got caught by a chugger once i think and that and that's all um so not for any particularly good reason but i don't think i donate to anything now oh you're a bit of a charity case yourself exactly i need all the help i can well we'll be getting you lunch as usual yes indeed thank you okay um we'll wrap up there thank you as always for listening to the cognitive engineering podcast i'm fraser mcgruer we've been here with peter cockle and nick hare of aleph insights until next time goodbye