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.