Human Compassion Goes Down as Number of Victims Goes Up

If you click on the link in this entry's title you can read an article about a study in human compassion. The author of the study concludes that as the number of victims goes up, human compassion goes down. He concludes that this is one reason why humans will respond emotionally to reports about one human in trouble, but not to reports of large scale suffering.

Although the author's conclusion is open to debate, it is a very provocative thesis. Of course, as the American aid response to Hurricane Katrina shows, there are millions of humans who are greatly affected by scenes of mass tragedy. Yet, news stories about events that affect one or a small number of humans do bring about intense responses.

Think of the emotional responses to the news story about the child who fell down the well back in the nineties and was rescued. There was an intense interest in that story. Or the story about the miners who were trapped down in West Virginia. That was also intensely followed.

Maybe its because we can see how are actions can affect one person, but find it much harder to see how our actions can affect a large number of people. Maybe there is something in our make-up that emotionally protects us from being overwhelmed by reports of mass suffering.

This study does have political implications. If you are interested in bringing about a societal response to a problem, like say the lack of health insurance for millions of Americans, don't cite statistics, rather tell a story about how the lack of insurance affects just one child or one family. Listeners will be able to make an emotional connection and once that connection is made, they will be able to then understand what the statistics mean.