The Institute for Applied Altruistic Psychology exists to translate behavioral and psychological research into tools, interventions, curricula, media outlets, and project frameworks that reliably support impartial and effectively altruistic action.
We convene neuroscientists, psychologists, behavioral scientists, and philosophers studying altruistic decision-making, moral cognition, cooperation, and biases in prosocial behavior – not just to understand why humans fail to act altruistically, but to help design and implement evidence-based ways to influence our actions towards impact in the real world.
Our goal is to move research on altruism from inside research labs and academic journals to real-world capacity: embedded in curricula, philanthropy, media, non-profits, and think tanks, grounded in the best available scientific research. In short, there is stellar, cutting edge research centered around reducing biases to make our prosocial decision making more effective and impactful, yet a substantial societal gap remains between this work and its practical application.
Across neuroscience, psychology, behavioral science, and moral philosophy, there is now an extraordinary body of research illuminating how humans make altruistic decisions – why we cooperate, why we fail to act impartially, and which cognitive constraints reliably derail prosocial intentions towards less effective outcomes. In parallel, a growing number of tools, interventions, and experimental paradigms have emerged that demonstrably improve altruistic reasoning and cooperative behavior to be more effective and more impactful. Yet the final, and arguably most critical step, remains largely unaddressed: societal translation. What good is a mature science of altruistic effective reasoning if it remains siloed in academic journals, inaccessible to educators outside of the niche field, organizations, philanthropists, and the very people whose decisions shape the world? Researchers themselves are rarely incentivized, resourced, or positioned to operationalize their findings at scale. A centralized institution is therefore necessary, one that deeply understands the science, respects its rigor, and is explicitly designed to move knowledge into usable educational frameworks, decision tools, real-world interventions, and public-facing content. The Institute for Applied Altruistic Psychology exists to perform this missing function: to ensure that our best understanding of effectively altruistic decision-making is not merely known, but used.
Alongside what Peter Singer did for applied philosophy, there are other clear precedents for this kind of translation in psychology & behavioral science. Examples of the “esoteric knowledge to broader societal uptake pipeline:
Research on altruistic decision-making is growing towards a comparable stage of maturity – but lacks an institution explicitly designed to perform this translational function. IAAP exists to fill that gap.
