The Nonlinear Library EA - EA Survey: Personality Traits in the EA Community by Willem Sleegers
Jul 11, 2024
16:05
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA Survey: Personality Traits in the EA Community, published by Willem Sleegers on July 11, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Summary
This post reports on data about the personality psychology of EAs from the 2018 EA Survey.
We observe some differences between our EA sample and the general population:
Younger male EAs and older female EAs score higher on
conscientiousness compared to the general population.
Male EAs score lower on
neuroticism than the general public.
EAs score high on
need for cognition, and relatively higher than a US and UK general population sample.
Though this may be partially due to demographic differences between the samples.
EAs appear to be slightly lower in empathic concern than a sample of US undergraduates.
But this seems attributable to demographic differences between the samples, in particular gender.
Small differences were observed regarding maximization and alternative search compared to other samples.
Generally, the lack of population norms of various personality traits makes comparisons between samples difficult.
Overall, we found only small associations between personality, donation behavior and cause prioritization.
Openness and alternative search were both found to be negatively associated with the amount donated.
These associations were found controlling for sex, age, and individual income, and survived corrections for multiple comparisons.
Perspective taking was negatively associated with prioritizing longtermist causes, meaning those who score lower on these traits were more likely to prioritize longtermist causes.
This association was found controlling for sex and age, and survived corrections for multiple comparisons.
Introduction
There has been considerable interest in EA and personality psychology (e.g. here, here, here, here, here and here).
In the 2018 EA Survey, respondents could complete an extra section of the EA Survey that contained several personality measures. A total of 1602 respondents answered (some of) the personality questions. These included the Big Five, Need for Cognition, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and a scale to assess maximization.
We report these results for others to gain a better understanding of the personality of members of the EA community. Additionally, personality traits have been found to be predictive of various important outcomes such as life, job, and relationship satisfaction. In the context of the EA community, prediction of donation behavior and cause prioritization may be of particular interest.[1]
Big Five
Respondents were asked to indicate how much they agree or disagree with whether a pair of personality traits applies to them, on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 'Strongly disagree' to 'Strongly agree'. The specific personality traits were drawn from the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) and consisted of:
Extraverted, enthusiastic.
Critical, quarrelsome.
Dependable, self-disciplined.
Anxious, easily upset.
Open to new experiences, complex.
Reserved, quiet.
Sympathetic, warm.
Disorganized, careless.
Calm, emotionally stable.
Conventional, uncreative.
Big Five score distributions
The plots below show the distribution of responses, including the sample size, to these questions in our sample. Each individual response is an average of the, in this case two, personality items. We show distributions for each individual item in the Appendix.
Personality trait
M
SD
n
Agreeableness
4.54
1.27
1499
Conscientiousness
4.95
1.44
1499
Extraversion
3.74
1.63
1512
Neuroticism
3.12
1.53
1508
Openness
5.48
1.13
1509
However, personality scores have been found to differ based on gender and age (Schmitt et al., 2008; Donnellan et al., 2008; Lehmann et al., 2013). As such, it is common for the population norms for personality measures to be split based on these groups. Otherwise, differen...
Summary
This post reports on data about the personality psychology of EAs from the 2018 EA Survey.
We observe some differences between our EA sample and the general population:
Younger male EAs and older female EAs score higher on
conscientiousness compared to the general population.
Male EAs score lower on
neuroticism than the general public.
EAs score high on
need for cognition, and relatively higher than a US and UK general population sample.
Though this may be partially due to demographic differences between the samples.
EAs appear to be slightly lower in empathic concern than a sample of US undergraduates.
But this seems attributable to demographic differences between the samples, in particular gender.
Small differences were observed regarding maximization and alternative search compared to other samples.
Generally, the lack of population norms of various personality traits makes comparisons between samples difficult.
Overall, we found only small associations between personality, donation behavior and cause prioritization.
Openness and alternative search were both found to be negatively associated with the amount donated.
These associations were found controlling for sex, age, and individual income, and survived corrections for multiple comparisons.
Perspective taking was negatively associated with prioritizing longtermist causes, meaning those who score lower on these traits were more likely to prioritize longtermist causes.
This association was found controlling for sex and age, and survived corrections for multiple comparisons.
Introduction
There has been considerable interest in EA and personality psychology (e.g. here, here, here, here, here and here).
In the 2018 EA Survey, respondents could complete an extra section of the EA Survey that contained several personality measures. A total of 1602 respondents answered (some of) the personality questions. These included the Big Five, Need for Cognition, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and a scale to assess maximization.
We report these results for others to gain a better understanding of the personality of members of the EA community. Additionally, personality traits have been found to be predictive of various important outcomes such as life, job, and relationship satisfaction. In the context of the EA community, prediction of donation behavior and cause prioritization may be of particular interest.[1]
Big Five
Respondents were asked to indicate how much they agree or disagree with whether a pair of personality traits applies to them, on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 'Strongly disagree' to 'Strongly agree'. The specific personality traits were drawn from the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) and consisted of:
Extraverted, enthusiastic.
Critical, quarrelsome.
Dependable, self-disciplined.
Anxious, easily upset.
Open to new experiences, complex.
Reserved, quiet.
Sympathetic, warm.
Disorganized, careless.
Calm, emotionally stable.
Conventional, uncreative.
Big Five score distributions
The plots below show the distribution of responses, including the sample size, to these questions in our sample. Each individual response is an average of the, in this case two, personality items. We show distributions for each individual item in the Appendix.
Personality trait
M
SD
n
Agreeableness
4.54
1.27
1499
Conscientiousness
4.95
1.44
1499
Extraversion
3.74
1.63
1512
Neuroticism
3.12
1.53
1508
Openness
5.48
1.13
1509
However, personality scores have been found to differ based on gender and age (Schmitt et al., 2008; Donnellan et al., 2008; Lehmann et al., 2013). As such, it is common for the population norms for personality measures to be split based on these groups. Otherwise, differen...