Summary
- As part of our ongoing work to study how to best frame EA, we experimentally tested different phrases and sentences that CEA were considering using on effectivealtruism.org.
Doing Good Better taglines
- We observed a consistent pattern where taglines that included the phrase ‘do[ing] good better’ received less support from respondents and inspired less interest in learning about EA.
- We replicated these results in a second experiment, where we confirmed that taglines referring to “do[ing] good better” performed less well than those referring to “do[ing] the most good”.
Nouns and sentences
- Nouns: The effect of using different nouns to refer to EA was small, but referring to EA as a ‘philosophy’ or ‘movement’ inspired the most curiosity compared to options including ‘project’ and ‘research field’.
- Sentences: “Find the most effective ways to do good with your time, money, and career” and “Effective altruism asks the question of how we [...]
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Outline:
(00:12) Summary
(01:23) Method
(02:18) Taglines (Study 1)
(03:40) Doing Good Better replication (Study 2)
(05:23) Sentences (Study 1)
(06:45) Nouns (Study 1)
(07:41) Effectiveness focus
(07:55) Conclusion
(08:56) Acknowledgments
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First published:
October 27th, 2025
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Y6zMpdwkkAQ8rF56w/framing-ea-doing-good-better-did-worse
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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