Concern felt per victim falls as the number of victims rises, so response to mass suffering is weaker than to individual suffering.
Slovic's 2007 finding: donations for one named child exceeded donations for two, and fell further for eight. Concern per victim falls as victim count rises, so the aggregate response is worse than the individual one.
In practice
- An appeal naming one family raises more than the same appeal naming forty, and the forty include the one.
- A safety case built on one worker's exposure moves a board that the annual fatality statistic did not.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- The catalogue of predictable errors