The Nonlinear Library EA - Are 1-in-5 Americans familiar with EA? by David Moss
Nov 2, 2023
05:44
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: Are 1-in-5 Americans familiar with EA?, published by David Moss on November 2, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
YouGov recently reported the
results
of a survey (n=1000) suggesting that about "one in five (22%) Americans are familiar with effective altruism."
[1]
We think these results are exceptionally unlikely to be true. Their 22% figure is very similar to the proportion of Americans we previously found
claim
to have heard of effective altruism (19%)
in our earlier survey
(n=6130). But, after conducting appropriate checks, we estimated that much lower percentages are likely to have genuinely heard of EA
[2]
(2.6% after the most stringent checks, which we speculate is still likely to be somewhat inflated
[3]
).
Is it possible that these numbers have simply dramatically increased following the FTX scandal?
Fortunately, we have tested this with multiple followup surveys explicitly designed with this possibility in mind.
[4]
In our most recent survey (conducted October 6th
[5]
), we estimated that approximately 16% (13.0%-20.4%) of US adults would
claim
to have heard of EA. Yet, when we add in additional checks to assess whether people appear to have really heard of the term, or have a basic understanding of what it means, this estimate drops to 3% (1.7% to 4.4%), and even to approximately 1% with a more stringent level of assessment.
[6]
These results are roughly in line with our earlier polling in May 2022, as well as additional polling we conducted between May 2022 and October 2023, and do not suggest any dramatic increase in awareness of effective altruism, although assessing small changes when base rates are already low is challenging.
We plan to continue to conduct additional surveys, which will allow us to assess possible changes from just before the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried to after the trial.
Attitudes towards EA
YouGov also report that respondents are, even post-FTX, overwhelmingly positive towards EA, with 81% of those who (claim to) have heard of EA approving or strongly approving of EA.
Fortunately, this positive view is broadly in line with our own findings- across different ways of breaking down who has heard of EA and different levels of stringency- which we aim to report on separately at a later date. However, our
earlier work
did find that awareness of FTX was associated with more negative attitudes towards EA.
Conclusions
The point of this post is not to criticise YouGov in particular. However, we do think it's worth highlighting that even highly reputable polling organizations should not be assumed to be employing all the additional checks that may be required to understand a particular question. This may apply especially in relation to niche topics like effective altruism, or more technical topics like AI, where additional nuance and checks may be required to assess understanding.
^
Also see this
quick take
.
^
There are many reasons why respondents may erroneously claim knowledge of something. But simply put, one reason is that people like demonstrating their knowledge, and may err on the side of claiming to have heard of something even if they are not sure. Moreover, if the component words that make up a term are familiar, then the respondent may either mistakenly believe they
have
already encountered the term, or think it is sufficient that they believe they can reasonably infer what the term means from its component parts to claim awareness (even when explicitly instructed not to approach the task this way!). Some people also appear to conflate the term with others - for example, some amalgamation of inclusive fitness/reciprocal altruism appears quite common.
For reference, over 12% of people claim to have heard of the specific term "Globally neutral advocacy": A term that the research team invented, which returns no google results as...
YouGov recently reported the
results
of a survey (n=1000) suggesting that about "one in five (22%) Americans are familiar with effective altruism."
[1]
We think these results are exceptionally unlikely to be true. Their 22% figure is very similar to the proportion of Americans we previously found
claim
to have heard of effective altruism (19%)
in our earlier survey
(n=6130). But, after conducting appropriate checks, we estimated that much lower percentages are likely to have genuinely heard of EA
[2]
(2.6% after the most stringent checks, which we speculate is still likely to be somewhat inflated
[3]
).
Is it possible that these numbers have simply dramatically increased following the FTX scandal?
Fortunately, we have tested this with multiple followup surveys explicitly designed with this possibility in mind.
[4]
In our most recent survey (conducted October 6th
[5]
), we estimated that approximately 16% (13.0%-20.4%) of US adults would
claim
to have heard of EA. Yet, when we add in additional checks to assess whether people appear to have really heard of the term, or have a basic understanding of what it means, this estimate drops to 3% (1.7% to 4.4%), and even to approximately 1% with a more stringent level of assessment.
[6]
These results are roughly in line with our earlier polling in May 2022, as well as additional polling we conducted between May 2022 and October 2023, and do not suggest any dramatic increase in awareness of effective altruism, although assessing small changes when base rates are already low is challenging.
We plan to continue to conduct additional surveys, which will allow us to assess possible changes from just before the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried to after the trial.
Attitudes towards EA
YouGov also report that respondents are, even post-FTX, overwhelmingly positive towards EA, with 81% of those who (claim to) have heard of EA approving or strongly approving of EA.
Fortunately, this positive view is broadly in line with our own findings- across different ways of breaking down who has heard of EA and different levels of stringency- which we aim to report on separately at a later date. However, our
earlier work
did find that awareness of FTX was associated with more negative attitudes towards EA.
Conclusions
The point of this post is not to criticise YouGov in particular. However, we do think it's worth highlighting that even highly reputable polling organizations should not be assumed to be employing all the additional checks that may be required to understand a particular question. This may apply especially in relation to niche topics like effective altruism, or more technical topics like AI, where additional nuance and checks may be required to assess understanding.
^
Also see this
quick take
.
^
There are many reasons why respondents may erroneously claim knowledge of something. But simply put, one reason is that people like demonstrating their knowledge, and may err on the side of claiming to have heard of something even if they are not sure. Moreover, if the component words that make up a term are familiar, then the respondent may either mistakenly believe they
have
already encountered the term, or think it is sufficient that they believe they can reasonably infer what the term means from its component parts to claim awareness (even when explicitly instructed not to approach the task this way!). Some people also appear to conflate the term with others - for example, some amalgamation of inclusive fitness/reciprocal altruism appears quite common.
For reference, over 12% of people claim to have heard of the specific term "Globally neutral advocacy": A term that the research team invented, which returns no google results as...