The Giving Multiplier: Encouraging Split Donations

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They discuss the creation of a website called giving multiplier that encourages people to make split donations to both personal favorite charities and highly effective charities. By offering a matching fund, they found that about 30% of people were willing to make split donations, creating a self-sustaining system. The website has raised $2.5 million over the last three years, with $1.5 million going to highly effective charities recommended by research organizations.

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How can people be encouraged in ways that are more natural and less manipulative to increase the amounts they give to charities? Why are arguments based on the effectiveness of charitable organizations less compelling to most people than we'd like for them to be? What percentages of a social group should be "doves", "hawks", "eagles", or something else? To what extent should our knowledge about our evolutionary history shape our values? Why are children more likely than adults to engage in prosocial behaviors towards strangers? Aside from anecdotal evidence, how do we know that political polarization in the US has been increasing over the last few decades? How can bridges of respect and trust be built between warring political tribes? How can people even begin to undertake the project of building bridges across political divides if they have no interest in understanding or engaging with the other side — especially if they believe that the other side is completely deranged, evil, or otherwise unfit to govern at any level? What is "deep pragmatism"? What might a "psychologically-informed" version of utilitarianism look like?

Josh Greene is Professor of Psychology and a member of the Center for Brain Science faculty at Harvard University. Much of his research has focused on the psychology and neuroscience of moral judgment, examining the interplay between emotion and reason in moral dilemmas. His more recent work studies critical features of individual and collective intelligence. His current neuroscientific research examines how the brain combines concepts to form thoughts and how thoughts are manipulated in reasoning and imagination. His current behavioral research examines strategies for improving social decision-making and alleviating intergroup conflict. He is also the author of Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. Learn more about him at his website, joshua-greene.net.

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