What can bouncers teach us about philanthropy?

TL;DR summary

• People are naturally attuned to watch out for the risk of being cheated (have a go at the puzzle to see an illustration of this)
• If we think about it, we see how this may explain a number of oddities in the way people give, including the unnecessary focus on charity CEO salaries, admin expenses, behaviour around donations to disasters, and other things
• This is important because it shows us that giving based on our hearts or our gut feel alone may not lead to the best outcomes - we should think carefully too if we want to make the most of our opportunity to give to charity and do good

Let's start with a puzzle:

You're working as a quality control technician for a card games manufacturer. You have to check this rule:

If a card has the letter S on one side, then it has the number 3 on the other side.

You already know for certain that every card has a letter on one side and a number on the other side. Please indicate, taking this into account, which card or cards you definitely need to turn over, and only that or those cards, in order to determine whether the rule is broken in the case of each of the four cards below.

You've got bored of working for a card games manufacturer, and you're now working as a security executive in a bar (you're a bouncer). It's your job to ensure that the rule governing the consumption of alcohol is strictly enforced. It states:

If a person drinks an alcoholic drink, then they must be over the age of 21 years old.

The cards below reprsent the drink of choice and age of four customers at your bar. (Each card represents one person: one side shows what they're drinking - note the card on the left shows beer,  the alcoholic kind! - the other side their age.) Please indicate which card or cards you definitely need to turn over, and only that or those cards, in order to determine whether the rule is broken in the case of each of the four customers.

Now here's the interesting thing: the first puzzle is easier than the second. People get the first one right around 10% of the time (Source below). For the second they get it right about 60% of the time (Source below). According to the evolutionary psychologists Tooby and Cosmides, this is because the mind has not evolved to detect logical violations of conditional rules. However, where those violations involve cheating on a social exchange, the mind is much better adapted to this.

If you want to explore this more, I would encourage you to look at the Wason selection task on the philosophy experiments site.

This leads me to propose my first major claim:

Human minds are naturally very sensitive to being cheated

And crucially, more sensitive to being cheated than to careful reasoning about complex things. (I don't think this claim is totally uncontroversial, but let's run with it for now)

What does this have to do with philanthropy?

I'm going to argue that this can explain a number of oddities in the sector:

• Many people raise concerns about "fatcat charity CEOs". In reality, this is an unhelpful distraction, as can be seen from the data I uncovered re charity CEO salaries, however it seems to arise because people are scared that they are somehow being "cheated" if their money goes to remunerating someone who is wealthier than the donor
• There has long been a problem with people looking at the admin expense ratio, even though admin expenses are not good measures to look at. People are again, I suspect, worried that their hard-earned funds are being trustingly donated to charities who may suck that money up by wasting it on "admin", i.e. on staff members who are ordinary people who are well-off like you and me
• People are more willing to donate to natural disasters than conflicts. Quote from my blog post on humanitarian disasters: "Studies indicate that donors are more inclined to give when they believe that the beneficiary is not responsible for their own situation (see this link or this one). This can help explain why the 2004 tsunami generated £1,400 per victim, whereas the more recent Syrian conflict generated only £270 per victim (according to the Guardian)"
• People often like giving to cute animals more than they like giving to people (especially where the animals are ones that people can relate to and are particularly likely to be interpreted as innocent - i.e. the pro-animal bias only applies in certain circumstances; and to be clear I'm not saying that it's wrong to give to animal charities) I'm afraid I don't yet have blog post to expand on this point - sorry!

Why are these examples important?

This is important because it shows us that giving based on our hearts or our gut feel alone may not lead to the best outcomes - we should think carefully too if we want to make the most of our opportunity to give to charity and do good

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"People get the first one right around 10% of the time" Source is wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task; wikipedia refers back to these two sources:

1.  Wason, P. C. (1977). "Self-contradictions". In Johnson-Laird, P. N.; Wason, P. C. Thinking: Readings in cognitive science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521217563.
2. Jump up^ Evans, Jonathan St. B. T.; Newstead, Stephen E.; Byrne, Ruth M. J. (1993). Human Reasoning: The Psychology of Deduction. Psychology Press.ISBN 978-0-86377-313-6.