Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference

by William MacAskill

Things may even be worse than that, however. There’s some reason to believe that the rise in ethical consumerism could even be harmful for the world, on balance. Psychologists have discovered a phenomenon that they call ‘moral licensing’ that describes how people who perform one good action often compensate by doing fewer good actions in the future. For example, in a recent experiment participants were told to choose a product from either a selection of mostly ‘green’ items (like an energy-efficient light bulb) or from a selection of mostly conventional items (like a regular light bulb). They were then told to perform a supposedly unrelated visual perception task: a square box with a diagonal line across it was displayed on a computer screen, and a pattern of twenty dots would flash up on the screen; the subjects had to press a key to indicate whether there were more dots on the left or right side of the line. It was always obvious which was the correct answer, and the experimenters emphasised the importance of being as accurate as possible, telling the subjects that the results of the test would be used in designing future experiments. However, the subjects were told that, whether or not their answers were correct, they’d be paid 0.5¢ every time they indicated there were more dots on the left-hand side of the line, and 5¢ every time they indicated there were more dots on the right-hand side. They therefore had a financial incentive to lie, and they were alone so they knew...