Mapping the Moral Architecture of Effective and Extraordinary Altruism

While global challenges demand both impartiality and effectiveness, people often prioritize those nearby and overlook the impact of their prosocial actions. Here, we examined what moral values support altruism that is both equitable (helping others impartially regardless of proximity or relatedness) and effective (helping others impactfully—maximizing lives saved per dollar). We studied two rare populations: effective altruists (EAs; N = 119), defined by their philosophical commitment to impartiality and maximizing welfare gains, and extraordinary altruists (XAs; N = 65), defined by their real-world decision to donate an organ to a stranger—an act of radical impartiality, though not explicitly impact-maximizing. A demographically matched general population sample (N = 176) served as a comparison group. Participants completed a moral battery assessing values theoretically aligned with parochial cooperation (e.g., familial and group loyalty) and universal cooperation (e.g., harm reduction, fairness, impartial beneficence, moral expansiveness), and a separate battery measuring equitable, effective, and combined altruistic orientations. Both altruistic groups showed elevated moral expansiveness and impartial beneficence relative to controls, though EAs, compared to XAs and controls, more strongly endorsed utilitarian values (including instrumental harm) and deprioritized traditional cooperative values (e.g., reciprocity, deference). Across groups, familial loyalty negatively predicted equitable and effective prosocial orientations. Crucially, however, group loyalty—typically seen as parochial—predicted equitable and effective altruism positively in all three samples. These findings challenge the view that values supporting cooperation within groups necessarily conflict with equitable and effective altruism, suggesting that inclusive forms of loyalty may help promote impartial, impact-driven prosocial behavior.