Stalin Was Right
"A single death is a tragedy," Joseph Stalin said. "A million deaths is a statistic." Now a psychology professor at the University of Oregon has tried to figure out why, with a paper suggesting that an evolved behavioral response may mean that we don’t feel that genocide is real unless we can focus on a particular individual. People understand reality in two ways, he argues: one is intuitive and experiential, the other is analytical and rational. Making decisions based on intuition is usually easier and more efficient than forming a judgment after analysis, and although our rational processes are supposed to monitor our intuitive impressions, they’re often "rather lax." A case in point: When participants in a study were asked to donate money either to a starving girl in Mali or to a larger group of famine victims represented only by a number, they gave significantly greater amounts to the wide-eyed girl. Moreover, contributions to the starving girl actually dropped when statistical information about the number of people suffering from severe hunger accompanied the girl’s name and picture.
"A single death is a tragedy," Joseph Stalin said. "A million deaths is a statistic." Now a psychology professor at the University of Oregon has tried to figure out why, with a paper suggesting that an evolved behavioral response may mean that we don’t feel that genocide is real unless we can focus on a particular individual. People understand reality in two ways, he argues: one is intuitive and experiential, the other is analytical and rational. Making decisions based on intuition is usually easier and more efficient than forming a judgment after analysis, and although our rational processes are supposed to monitor our intuitive impressions, they’re often "rather lax." A case in point: When participants in a study were asked to donate money either to a starving girl in Mali or to a larger group of famine victims represented only by a number, they gave significantly greater amounts to the wide-eyed girl. Moreover, contributions to the starving girl actually dropped when statistical information about the number of people suffering from severe hunger accompanied the girl’s name and picture.
The full article is linked here. What hit me in the above text was the fact that this is so true of me. Tell me about the twenty million slaves around the world and I’ll cringe, but provide me with a first-hand account of a child sex-slave or a kidnapped domestic slaved trapped in hell on earth, and I’ll be spurred to action. Notify me of the forty million AIDS orphans around the world and my heart will go out to them, but chronicle me the story of a young girl who watched first her father and then her mother die of this dreaded disease and I’ll be moved provide for her education and the care of her siblings. Provide me the statistics of the Rwandan genocide and I’ll be the typical Westerner in “Hotel Rwanda” who saw the tragedy on TV and took a cup of coffee and said, “That’s too bad.” But travel to that country and interview survivors of the genocide, tell me their stories, how they survived, the loved ones they lost, and I’ll be burdened for their cause and hardships. This seems like a very accurate portrayal of how we respond to tragedies, how we make decisions, what spurs us to action.
1 comment:
It seems as if we look at the "statistics" as to overwhelming for one person to tackle...leave it to the government and large organizations (which you reference in a later post). On the contrary if we see an individual, we know we can help that one person, we can do something to have an impact on their life.
I think about this in teaching a lot. At the end of the day, I typically feel like I haven't helped anyone learn anything. Then I recently read a quote, something to the effect that if we teach/help one person, then they go and teach/help one person and the chain reaction continues. I thought this was a better way to think about it.
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