Meta-analyses on charitable giving clarify evidence for empathic and effective altruism

Effective altruists argue that charitable giving is over-influenced by empathic responses and should instead be guided by cost-benefit analyses about the effectiveness of giving. To provide insight into the extent to which empathy and effectiveness are associated with charitable giving in the population, two meta-analyses are conducted, synthesising 416 effect sizes from 124 papers sampling 74,797 participants. Here we show that effectiveness, r = 0.34, SE = 0.04, 95%CIs [0.28, 0.40], and empathy, r = 0.25, SE = 0.02, CIs [0.21, 0.29], both positively relate to charitable giving overall. However, prediction intervals reveal significant heterogeneity. Moderation analyses reveal one crucial caveat to the overall association between effectiveness and charitable giving: although the mean effect is relatively large when effectiveness is measured, r = 0.42, CIs [0.35, 0.48], manipulated effectiveness has a weak effect, r = 0.03, CIs [-0.10, 0.17]. Our findings suggest that while people may self-perceive as effective altruists, they give like empathic ones, a disjunction that calls for deeper causal investigation.