The Personality of Effective Altruists Part II

This episode features:


-Are people with autism spectrum disorder more utilitarian?


-Do utilitarian judgments in trolley problems predict interest in
effective altruism?


-What is the “identifiable victim effect”


-Why empathy is bad for morality


-Are effective altruists more empathetic than average?  Less
empathetic?


-Why do EAs disproportionately study STEM subjects and work in
STEM fields?


-Why is EA mostly male?


-Why does gender predict cause preferences?


 


Full transcript


 


-References-


Apply Psychology:


Baron-Cohen, S., & Wheelwright, S. (2004). The empathy
quotient: an investigation of adults with Asperger syndrome or
high functioning autism, and normal sex differences. Journal of
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Batson, C. D., Klein, T. R., Highberger, L., & Shaw, L. L.
(1995). Immorality from empathy-induced altruism: When compassion
and justice conflict. Journal of personality and social
psychology, 68(6), 1042.


Bloom, P. (2017). Empathy and its discontents. Trends in
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Brewer, R., Marsh, A. A., Catmur, C., Cardinale, E. M., Stoycos,
S., Cook, R., & Bird, G. (2015). The impact of autism
spectrum disorder and alexithymia on judgments of moral
acceptability. Journal of abnormal psychology, 124(3), 589. 


Cecchetto, C., Korb, S., Rumiati, R. I., & Aiello, M. (2018).
Emotional reactions in moral decision-making are influenced by
empathy and alexithymia. Social neuroscience, 13(2), 226-240.


Conway, P., Goldstein-Greenwood, J., Polacek, D., & Greene,
J. D. (2018). Sacrificial utilitarian judgments do reflect
concern for the greater good: Clarification via process
dissociation and the judgments of philosophers. Cognition, 179,
241-265.


Gleichgerrcht, E., Torralva, T., Rattazzi, A., Marenco, V., Roca,
M., & Manes, F. (2012). Selective impairment of cognitive
empathy for moral judgment in adults with high functioning
autism. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 8(7),
780-788. 


Gleichgerrcht, E., & Young, L. (2013). Low levels of empathic
concern predict utilitarian moral judgment. PloS one, 8(4),
e60418.


Greene, J. D. (2015). Beyond point-and-shoot morality: Why
cognitive (neuro) science matters for ethics. The Law &
Ethics of Human Rights, 9(2), 141-172.


Hein, G., Silani, G., Preuschoff, K., Batson, C. D., &
Singer, T. (2010). Neural responses to ingroup and outgroup
members' suffering predict individual differences in costly
helping. Neuron, 68(1), 149-160. 


Kahane, G. (2015). Sidetracked by trolleys: Why sacrificial moral
dilemmas tell us little (or nothing) about utilitarian judgment.
Social neuroscience, 10(5), 551-560.


Kahane, G., Everett, J. A., Earp, B. D., Caviola, L., Faber, N.
S., Crockett, M. J., & Savulescu, J. (2018). Beyond
sacrificial harm: A two-dimensional model of utilitarian
psychology. Psychological Review, 125(2), 131. 


Kahane, G., Everett, J. A., Earp, B. D., Farias, M., &
Savulescu, J. (2015). ‘Utilitarian’ judgments in sacrificial
moral dilemmas do not reflect impartial concern for the greater
good. Cognition, 134, 193-209.


Kogut, T., & Ritov, I. (2005). The “identified victim”
effect: An identified group, or just a single individual?.
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Levant, R. F., Hall, R. J., Williams, C. M., & Hasan, N. T.
(2009). Gender differences in alexithymia. Psychology of men
& masculinity, 10(3), 190.


Patil, I., Melsbach, J., Hennig-Fast, K., & Silani, G.
(2016). Divergent roles of autistic and alexithymic traits in
utilitarian moral judgments in adults with autism. Scientific
reports, 6, 23637.


Patil, I., & Silani, G. (2014). Reduced empathic concern
leads to utilitarian moral judgments in trait alexithymia.
Frontiers in psychology, 5, 501.


Ruzich, E., Allison, C., Chakrabarti, B., Smith, P., Musto, H.,
Ring, H., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2015). Sex and STEM occupation
predict autism-spectrum quotient (AQ) scores in half a million
people. PloS one, 10(10), e0141229.


Singer, P. (2015). The most good you can do: How effective
altruism is changing ideas about living ethically. New Haven, CT:
Yale University.


Vyas, K., Jameel, L., Bellesi, G., Crawford, S., & Channon,
S. (2017). Derailing the trolley: Everyday utilitarian judgments
in groups high versus low in psychopathic traits or autistic
traits. Psychiatry research, 250, 84-91.


Check This Rec:


Nesse, R. M. (2019). Good reasons for bad feelings: insights from
the frontier of evolutionary psychiatry. Penguin.