Did you know that for all our talk about the ‘pursuit of happiness,’ we actually take a very dim view of people who seek it?

The contemporary effective altruism movement seeks to transform philanthropy in two ways: 1) by directing philanthropy to the most important objectives, and 2) by ensuring that philanthropic dollars ...

Brian Ottens wished he could buy his 8-year-old daughter a better iPad. The first-generation one she’d inherited from her great-grandmother didn’t support the game she wanted to play. But Ottens has ...

Four years ago, Angela Stimpson agreed to donate a kidney to a complete stranger. "The only thing I knew about my recipient was that she was a female and she lived in Bakersfield, Calif.," Stimpson ...

Can helping others make us healthier? When scientists scanned the brains of people who donated money to charity, they found something surprising: Giving activated the same reward pathways as personal ...

I've got a new article in the New Yorker this week about the persistent paradox of altruism. It's subscription only, but here's the beginning: The vampire bat emerges from its cave at the darkest hour ...

The Horizon Institute for Public Service, a nonprofit organization with extensive ties to the tech-adjacent effective altruism movement, has deployed a small army of fellows at influential think tanks ...

Earlier today, I stumbled upon a memory of Steven Pinker’s account of altruism in his seminal book “How the mind works” as I ...

The world’s population tops 7 billion—and counting. Spin the globe, and you’ll encounter all types of compelling problems: a health crisis here, an earthquake there. You want to make a difference, but ...

A new study reveals a potential genetic basis in altruism — or demonstrating selflessness to benefit others — and it does so by looking no further than the common honey bee. According to a recent ...