The Limits of Human Compassion

Summary

The article discusses the concept of psychic numbing, which explains why people are more likely to respond emotionally and financially to stories of individual suffering rather than statistics about large-scale tragedies, leading to significant implications for charitable giving and international responses to crises.

Abstract

The article "The Limits of Human Compassion" explores the psychological phenomenon of psychic numbing, where individuals' empathy and willingness to help decrease as the number of victims in a tragedy increases. Despite the discomfort caused by charity advertisements featuring individual stories of suffering, they are more effective in eliciting donations than presenting statistics of larger groups. This is due to the human brain's limited capacity for empathy, which is overwhelmed by the sheer scale of mass suffering, as demonstrated by research such as a 2014 study by Paul Slovic. The article argues that this cognitive limitation has far-reaching consequences, including inadequate responses to genocides and other humanitarian crises, as seen in the international community's delayed reaction to the Rwandan Genocide. The author suggests that awareness of psychic numbing can help individuals and policymakers overcome this empathy gap and take more compassionate actions.

Opinions

The author is critical of the public's tendency to give low ratings to charity advertisements that evoke negative emotions, despite their effectiveness in prompting donations.
The article suggests that marketing individual stories is a necessary strategy for charities, as it aligns with the human brain's predisposition to empathize with a few individuals rather than large numbers.
The author implies that the phenomenon of psychic numbing is a significant factor in the lack of international intervention during large-scale humanitarian crises, such as the Rwandan Genocide.
There is an underlying call to action for readers to be more conscious of the psychological barriers to compassion and to remember that every statistic represents real human lives.
The author believes that understanding psychic numbing can lead to better strategies for charitable appeals and more effective responses to mass suffering.

How psychic numbing forces charities to market individuals and allows foreign dictators to commit genocides

I’ve never been a fan of adverts for charities. I tend to get sad quite easily so seeing underweight, malnourished children on my TV isn’t generally something I’d say I enjoy, and I wouldn’t be alone. In 2018, 83% of charity adverts in the UK were given a one-star rating by the British public. Based on research from Civil Society News, a majority of these reviews were given because they caused viewers to elicit negative responses such as fear or sadness for the children depicted.

This seems pretty obvious though, and quite a dumb reason to give a charity a one-star review. Charities are MEANT to make you feel like that. By telling you a short story about one specific child, charities pave the way for your empathy to open your wallet. Charity adverts do nothing more than depict the harsh reality of life for the unseen millions through the eyes of a single example. For many people, it’s a harsh reality that’s hard to digest from the comfort of a first world living-room.

Is there a better way? Would it be possible for adverts to be just as effective without the emotional toll that comes with them? Perhaps if we were shown hard statistics about the millions affected rather than a story about one person, we’d be likely to give even more money? Well, I’m afraid the answer is probably not.

We can all agree that completely logically (although possibly callously), the suffering of one person is objectively not as bad as when a million people experience that same suffering. It should probably make sense then that the phrase ‘13 million people are on the brink of starvation in Yemen, please donate to help save them’ (That really is true, please donate here) would make you more likely to donate money than ‘Here is a child starving in Yemen, please donate to help save his life’ right? Wrong. The reason for that is down to a little known phenomenon called ‘psychic numbing’.

It has been shown in multiple studies that the more people we see affected by a tragedy, the less we seem to care about it. Take for example this study by Paul Slovic done in 2014. When comparing donation amounts for the exact same cause, donations were significantly greater for adverts which featured the story of one child than adverts that featured two or more. Even at the level of single digits, we are pre-disposed to care for the few than for the many. This is the concept behind psychic numbing.

‘Even at the level of single digits, we are pre-disposed to care for the few than for the many.’

But why is that? What causes this psychic numbing? Well, human empathy is a powerful thing. It causes us to viscerally feel what someone else may be feeling and often allows us to produce an active response based on those perceived emotions. This is exactly what charities target, and very successfully. However, there are some huge negatives. Like I mentioned previously, we can only empathize with one or two people at a time. This can cause us to act in ways that benefit the few people we empathize with rather than the many that we don’t. It can cause us to ignore the overall statistical suffering in favour of the few who are put in the spotlight.

There are also certain natural limits to the human mind. Here’s a small experiment: Try and visualize 1 million individual people in one space. 1 million people who live, breathe and feel just as much as you or I do. Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? Well, it really is. The human mind is staggeringly feeble when it comes to imagining large numbers. It’s thought that the human brain can only truly visualize numbers fewer than 100, however more science needs to be done to back this research up. The more people involved in a tragedy, the less we seem to care. The less we seem to care, the less likely we are to help prevent that tragedy.

There are huge amounts of historical examples that back up this theory. Think back to incidents such as the Rwandan Genocide. In 100 days, 800,000 people were slaughtered by various Rwandan government forces. We knew about it while it was happening, but what did the international community do? Not a whole lot. Belgium pleaded the UN to send troops into the country, which they did (albeit too late), but they were not given a mandate to stop the killing. In fact, most soldiers sent in eventually pulled out after an initial 10 were killed in the conflict. No-one intervened until eventually it just ended. The RPF had won the struggle to the tune of 800,000 Rwandan deaths.

I’m not saying that psychic numbing was the sole cause of those 800,000 tragic deaths. What I am saying is that the phenomenon of psychic numbing allows us the dangerous ability to comfortably sit back in inaction. Without the ability to empathize with millions, we lose our compassion when it matters the most.

The news isn’t all bad though. Just by reading this article and knowing about the existence of psychic numbing you are already in a better place to guard against it. All we need to do is keep in mind that behind every number we see on the news is a real human being, and that behind every human being is someone who deserved their shot at life.