Altruism in governance: Insight from randomized training

Sultan Mehmood (New Economic School), Shaheen Naseer (Lahore School of Economics) and Daniel L. Chen (Toulouse School of Economics)

GPI Working Paper No. 7 - 2022, published in the Toulouse School of Economics Working Paper series and in the Journal of Development Economics

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Randomizing different schools of thought in training altruism finds that training junior deputy ministers in the utility of empathy renders at least a 0.4 standard deviation increase in altruism. Treated ministers increased their perspective-taking: blood donations doubled, but only when blood banks requested their exact blood type. Perspective-taking in strategic dilemmas improved. Field measures such as orphanage visits and volunteering in impoverished schools also increased, as did their test scores in teamwork assessments in policy scenarios. Overall, our results underscore that the utility of empathy can be a parsimonious foundation for the formation of prosociality, even impacting the behavior of adults in the field.

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