How Effective Altruism Can Help Psychologists Maximize Their Impact

Abstract

Although many psychologists are interested in making the world a better place through their work, they are often unable to have the impact that they would like. Here, we suggest that both individuals and psychology as a field can better improve human welfare by incorporating ideas from Effective Altruism, a growing movement whose members aim to do the most good by using science and reason to inform their efforts. In this paper, we first provide a brief introduction to Effective Altruism and review important principles that can be applied to how psychologists approach their careers, such as the ITN framework (Importance, Tractability, and Neglectedness). Next, we review how effective altruism can inform how individuals approach their roles as teachers, clinicians, researchers, mentors, and participants in the non-academic world. Finally, we close with a discussion of ideas for how psychology, as a field, can increase its positive impact. By applying insights from effective altruism to psychological science, we aim to integrate new theoretical frameworks into psychological science, stimulate new areas of research, start a discussion on how psychology can maximize its impact, and inspire the psychology community to do the most good.

How Effective Altruism Can Help Psychologists Maximize Their Impact

“…Below, we summarize research done at the intersection of psychology and each of these topics; we provide a more comprehensive list of psychological research with strong EA links in Supplementary Online Material 3 in the Supplemental Material. For readers who are interested in conducting similar research, we present other candidate ideas in Gainsburg and Cristia (2022). 1 Ineffective altruism.…”