Is there a term for this phenomenon?
July 15, 2015 4:02 PM Subscribe
When there's a news story about one cow that escapes from a slaughterhouse, everyone cheers and wants to donate money and adopt it. But when millions of cows die every day, no one bats an eye. Similarly: when one homeless person gets attention for her particular "down on her luck" story, or does something ordinary like returning a lost wallet to its owner, everyone cheers; people offer money, clothes, jobs. But the countless homeless people everyday don't cause the same reaction. Is there a name for this phenomenon - where a single example, pulled from the crowd, triggers compassion, but the crowd itself gets only apathy?
Also, has research been done on this phenomenon? Articles written? I'd like to learn more about it, but I don't know how to Google it.
Also, has research been done on this phenomenon? Articles written? I'd like to learn more about it, but I don't know how to Google it.
Best answer: "Together, these studies suggest that the collapse of compassion happens because when people see multiple victims, it is a signal that they ought to rein in their emotions." From "Why is the death of one million a statistic?"
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:07 PM on July 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:07 PM on July 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Widely (and apparently mis-) attributed to Stalin: "The death of one man is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."
There's also the bystander effect.
posted by dogrose at 4:08 PM on July 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
There's also the bystander effect.
posted by dogrose at 4:08 PM on July 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
I can't name it but I feel this quote expands on and supplies a very believable reason for the phenomenon. It's from American Gods by Neil Gaiman and is one of my favourite ever quotes:
“There was a girl, and her uncle sold her. Put like that it seems so simple.
No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then by some means or other, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'll mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection) but still unique.
Without individuals we see only numbers, a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, "casualties may rise to a million." With individual stories, the statistics become people- but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child's swollen, swollen belly and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, this skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies' own myriad squirming children?
We draw our lines around these moments of pain, remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain.
Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.
A life that is, like any other, unlike any other.
And the simple truth is this: There was a girl, and her uncle sold her.”
posted by *becca* at 4:09 PM on July 15, 2015 [17 favorites]
“There was a girl, and her uncle sold her. Put like that it seems so simple.
No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then by some means or other, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'll mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection) but still unique.
Without individuals we see only numbers, a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, "casualties may rise to a million." With individual stories, the statistics become people- but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child's swollen, swollen belly and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, this skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies' own myriad squirming children?
We draw our lines around these moments of pain, remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain.
Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.
A life that is, like any other, unlike any other.
And the simple truth is this: There was a girl, and her uncle sold her.”
posted by *becca* at 4:09 PM on July 15, 2015 [17 favorites]
Poster Child
posted by Jason and Laszlo at 4:14 PM on July 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Jason and Laszlo at 4:14 PM on July 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Paul Slovic from the University of Oregon has done some research on this- see this NPR article.
posted by three_red_balloons at 4:19 PM on July 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by three_red_balloons at 4:19 PM on July 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think of the phrase human interest story, in which a singular experience is illuminated through narrative and context. In an evolutionary-psychological sense, humans haven't had a need for skills that allow us to comprehend or empathize with vast numbers of other persons (and I use that term to include animals used in agriculture). Our historic range of importance has been our immediate kin, whose lives and experiences we generally know something about. Journalists know that we still respond to stories plucked from the background in this way, and we end up with human interest stories. I'd venture to say that almost all successful journalism still requires a human interest hook to be widely read. Even dry science reporting has to relate to a researcher, a patient, or someone before people will read it.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 4:20 PM on July 15, 2015
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 4:20 PM on July 15, 2015
Best answer: As noted in MonkeyToes's Psychology Today link, termed "Collapse of Compassion" by Deborah Small and Paul Slovic. This paper goes into a ton of detail, with empirical studies: Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims. Looks like there's a PDF here.
posted by supercres at 4:23 PM on July 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by supercres at 4:23 PM on July 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
Best answer: And another term in the keywords of that paper: Identifiable victim effect
posted by supercres at 4:24 PM on July 15, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by supercres at 4:24 PM on July 15, 2015 [5 favorites]
Seconding "poster child." There may be other, wordier terms that describe the same thing, but "poster child" is a term that specifically applies to using a single (presumably photogenic or otherwise newsworthy) individual to evoke a public response to a more widely experienced tragic condition or situation.
posted by mosk at 5:13 PM on July 15, 2015
posted by mosk at 5:13 PM on July 15, 2015
Best answer: I was just reading about this today in an article on why #DeadRaccoonTO was so popular.
It's called Statistical Numbing according to Psychology Today.
posted by scrute at 5:15 PM on July 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
It's called Statistical Numbing according to Psychology Today.
posted by scrute at 5:15 PM on July 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
There was an interesting article the other day in the New York Times about this very subject. It discusses the "empathy gap" and how empathy is a choice.
posted by topophilia at 5:36 PM on July 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by topophilia at 5:36 PM on July 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
Miyabo has it. "Dog bites man" isn't news, but "man bites dog" is. The slaughterhouse is operating as usual? Boring. Something out of the ordinary happened at the slaughterhouse? Breaking news. It's also a human-interest story for sure.I don't work there anymore, but the TV station I worked for definitely aired the footage from whatever TV station that was in Texas, and we had the corresponding news story on the website. It did well for the station's Facebook page, too.
posted by emelenjr at 6:41 PM on July 15, 2015
posted by emelenjr at 6:41 PM on July 15, 2015
Response by poster: Extremely helpful answers. Thanks, all!
posted by southern_sky at 7:36 PM on July 15, 2015
posted by southern_sky at 7:36 PM on July 15, 2015
Best answer: In searching for research relevant to this topic, the exact phrase you are looking for is "psychophysical numbing". The phenomenon was identified/labelled by Fetherstonhaugh and colleagues in this paper here.
As sumarised in this paper, the one above "found that participants rated an intervention saving a fixed number of lives to be less worth investing in when more total lives were at risk (i.e., when saved lives represented a smaller proportion of the total threat or problem)."
[This notion is sometimes referred to as "psychic numbing", but this label is less apt/correct.]
posted by Halo in reverse at 2:17 AM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
As sumarised in this paper, the one above "found that participants rated an intervention saving a fixed number of lives to be less worth investing in when more total lives were at risk (i.e., when saved lives represented a smaller proportion of the total threat or problem)."
[This notion is sometimes referred to as "psychic numbing", but this label is less apt/correct.]
posted by Halo in reverse at 2:17 AM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
"The mark of a civilized man [or human] is the capacity to read a column of numbers and weep."
- attributed to Bertrand Russell
When you hear about one homeless person the feeling is frustration because you can't really help them; you can only give them a five dollar bill now, or buy them coffee and a bagel. But when you hear about the thousands of homeless people (or people being torture, or people being killed, or people being discriminated against), any kind of suffering, the sensation starts as chills or shudders and then blossoms to nausea and then turns into paralysis and mind-blankness and lassitude. It's impossible to think and hard to walk or function. But you have to ignore it and try to go on.
The thing to focus on is that one person, that one five dollar bill. Not triage because you are in no position to judge who will derive more benefit from help, but rather to start at one corner where you are and work your way outwards. Just help the nearest person because it's all you can do. And as soon as you can help someone else also, help the next nearest person.
it's not always indifference, it's the fact that we can only help one cow.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:45 AM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
- attributed to Bertrand Russell
When you hear about one homeless person the feeling is frustration because you can't really help them; you can only give them a five dollar bill now, or buy them coffee and a bagel. But when you hear about the thousands of homeless people (or people being torture, or people being killed, or people being discriminated against), any kind of suffering, the sensation starts as chills or shudders and then blossoms to nausea and then turns into paralysis and mind-blankness and lassitude. It's impossible to think and hard to walk or function. But you have to ignore it and try to go on.
The thing to focus on is that one person, that one five dollar bill. Not triage because you are in no position to judge who will derive more benefit from help, but rather to start at one corner where you are and work your way outwards. Just help the nearest person because it's all you can do. And as soon as you can help someone else also, help the next nearest person.
it's not always indifference, it's the fact that we can only help one cow.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:45 AM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
monkey sphere thinking.
when there is one notable cow we feel a personal connection to it. when it's the net suffering of all cows, those cows cease being cows. They are not knowable individuals that we can include in our emotional life.
It's why the death of a beloved pet hurts more today than thousands of children that died the same day. Logically we know one is worse, but it's not how we experience it.
posted by French Fry at 9:30 AM on July 16, 2015
when there is one notable cow we feel a personal connection to it. when it's the net suffering of all cows, those cows cease being cows. They are not knowable individuals that we can include in our emotional life.
It's why the death of a beloved pet hurts more today than thousands of children that died the same day. Logically we know one is worse, but it's not how we experience it.
posted by French Fry at 9:30 AM on July 16, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Seeba at 4:06 PM on July 15, 2015 [11 favorites]