multifoliaterose comments on Conflicts Between Mental Subagents: Expanding Wei Dai's Master-Slave Model - Less Wrong

46 Post author: Yvain 04 August 2010 09:16AM

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Comment author: steven0461 04 August 2010 11:43:04PM 1 point [-]

Recalling your post Doing your good deed for the day, it seems plausible that for some people, giving money to beggars is likely to lower their motivation to do other good things.

Does this sort of effect still apply to people who are consciously aware of it?

Comment author: multifoliaterose 04 August 2010 11:58:05PM 0 points [-]

I don't know of any experimental results addressing your question.

My own interpretation of the "doing your good deed for the day" phenomenon is that people have a fixed capacity for sacrifice - that after having made a number of decisions where they felt like they were sacrificing something, people stop being being willing to sacrifice more.

So my guess would be that the effect applies to people who don't enjoy giving to beggars (whether or not they're consciously aware of the effect) but not to people who do enjoy giving to beggars.