Choosing a charity with a spreadsheet may do more good, but it does not make you look good. In seven experiments, people judged donors who weighed cost-effectiveness as less moral and less attractive as friends or partners than donors who said they followed their empathy.
The paper is by Andres Montealegre of Yale University, Lance S. Bush and David A. Pizarro of Cornell University, David Moss of Canterbury Christ Church University and William Jimenez-Leal of Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá. It was published online in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin on November 3, 2025. All studies were preregistered.
Meet John, the calculating donor
In the first study, 200 US participants read what was presented as a real survey answer from a man called John about how he would choose a charity. Half saw: “I would use evidence to calculate which charity spends its donations most cost effectively.” The other half saw that he would put himself in the shoes of people in difficult situations and give to a charity that helped them.
The calculating John was rated lower in moral character, less driven by moral motives and less desirable as a coworker, neighbour, roommate, friend or romantic partner. He did get credit for something: participants rated him higher in reasonableness and competence. Trustworthiness and integrity did not differ.
Two further studies moved the test to a scenario about a fundraiser asking for help for a child living in extreme poverty. A supplementary version in which participants judged both donors side by side replicated the first result.
People know the penalty is coming
Donors are aware of this. In a study of 400 participants, only 17% thought the deliberative approach would make others see them as a morally better person, and 27% thought it would make them a more desirable social partner.
Even committed effective altruists expect the hit. Among 364 self-identified members of that movement, 96% said they would pick charities by deliberation. Yet they predicted that people outside the movement would judge their moral character worse for it, while fellow effective altruists would judge it better.
Wanting to look good shifts real donations
Two studies tested whether reputation changes behaviour. When 401 participants were asked which approach they would take if they wanted to make a good impression, 71% chose empathy, compared with 57% of those given no instruction.
In the final study, 502 participants chose where the researchers would send a real 20-cent donation: an expensive medical procedure to save one sick child, or laboratory equipment that would help more patients overall. Most people already favoured the child without any prompt. Telling them to choose in a way that would make others think well of them raised donations to the child by a further 8 percentage points.
The authors caution that real reputation effects are messier. In a separate field study they found people were less likely to pick the high-empathy cause when their choice was public, perhaps to avoid looking like show-offs. They also stress that the gap is relative: deliberators are not necessarily seen as bad, they simply miss out on the credit that visible empathy earns.
Their suggested workaround is to show empathy first and then deliberate, or to make effectiveness figures a standard part of how charities present themselves.
Study Details:
- Title: Does Maximizing Good Make People Look Bad?
- Authors: Andres Montealegre, Lance S. Bush, David Moss, David A. Pizarro, William Jimenez-Leal
- Journal: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Publication Date: November 3, 2025
- DOI: 10.1177/01461672251361210