“Framing EA: ‘Doing Good Better’ Did Worse” by Rethink Priorities, David_Moss

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 [...] ---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 --- First published: October 27th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Y6zMpdwkkAQ8rF56w/framing-ea-doing-good-better-did-worse --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.