Evaluability Bias in Charitable Giving - PMC
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Studies evaluability bias in charitable giving, demonstrating how donors prioritize easily-measurable metrics over actual impact—a cognitive bias relevant to AI safety funding and resource allocation decisions.
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This research introduces the 'evaluability bias'—the tendency to weight attributes based on how easily they can be evaluated rather than their actual importance. The authors demonstrate that donors prefer charities with low overhead ratios over those with high cost-effectiveness (lives saved per dollar) because administrative costs are easier to evaluate. Through four studies, they show that when donors evaluate charities individually, they prioritize overhead ratios, but when comparing multiple charities directly, they shift focus to cost-effectiveness metrics. This bias has significant implications for charitable giving, as it may lead donors to support less impactful organizations.
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The evaluability bias in charitable giving: Saving administration costs or saving lives? - PMC
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Judgm Decis Mak . Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Sep 30.
Published in final edited form as: Judgm Decis Mak. 2014 Jul 1;9(4):303–316.
The evaluability bias in charitable giving: Saving administration costs or saving lives?
Lucius Caviola
Lucius Caviola
* Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, 9 South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3UD, U.K.
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* , Nadira Faulmüller
Nadira Faulmüller
†Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
‡ Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford
§ Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford
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†, ‡, § , Jim A C Everett
Jim A C Everett
†Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
‡ Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford
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†, ‡ , Julian Savulescu
Julian Savulescu
‡ Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford
§ Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford
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‡, § , Guy Kahane
Guy Kahane
‡ Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford
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‡
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* Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, 9 South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3UD, U.K.
†Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
‡ Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford
§ Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford
✉ Corresponding authors: lucius.caviola@psy.ox.ac.uk , or nadira.faulmueller@psy.ox.ac.uk
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