Training Effective Altruism: Experimental Evidence from Pakistan

Abstract

This is a pre-analysis plan specifying the analysis we plan to perform for the evaluation of a training workshop on empathy in Pakistan with deputy ministers on their actual policy outcomes in year 1 and year 2 post-workshop as they perform their official duties. Specifically, we will use government audit documents to investigate spending decisions of ministers across 12 government departments (which represent the universe of their spending choices).Our main hypothesis is that altruism training will increase spending on social policies (i.e. will raise ministers' budgetary recommendations to education and health) and reduce spending on selforiented policies (i.e. budgetary recommendations for personal security and office maintenance). This study experimentally evaluates three methods of cultivating prosocial behaviour (i) UtilitarianValue of Empathy (ii) Malleability of Empathy (iii) Joint Utilitarian and Malleability Treatment (iv) Placebo training.This is an individual level randomised controlled trial with 213 deputy ministers with about 50 ministers per treatment arm and we evaluate impact on ministers' 12 policy outcomes. If we deviate from the methods set out in this document, we will provide clear justifications and wherever possible will also publish pre-plan analysis for comparison.