Cognitive Biases Stop Us From Donating Effectively

Many more struggle with health issues that can be solved at relatively low costs. Take, for example, trachoma, an infectious eye disease that over 20 million people actively suffer from, many of whom live in conditions of extreme poverty.⁵ If left untreated, trachoma can cause an individual’s eyelids to turn inward, eventually resulting in blindness. The cost of treating trachoma with surgery has been estimated to be as low as $7.14,⁶ yet many still do not have access to this potentially life-changing procedure. These facts and figures provide a foundation for some key questions: Where is all of this money going, how much is it helping, and how can better outcomes be achieved? 

One reason why the donations described above do not necessarily achieve meaningful progress on these important outcomes, such as alleviating the suffering caused by trachoma, is because cognitive biases drive many of our donation decisions. These rationality-inhibiting biases can lead to a misallocation of resources, hereafter referred to as ‘ineffective altruism’. For the purpose of this article, ineffective altruism occurs when an individual has a given preference for a cause — such as curing blindness, protecting animal welfare, or improving access to education — and does not direct their donations to a charity that is highly effective at solving it.

Tremendous social good can be created if the biases that influence ineffective altruism are identified and corrected through better choice architecture where appropriate. In particular, two cognitive biases are important drivers of ineffective altruism: distance bias and the identifiable victim effect.