I"People expect that helping eight victims costs more than helping one, so imposing a donation request created an incentive to turn off compassion. "... I think the issue of people not feeling compassion for larger numbers of people is not because of perceived compassion fatigue, but because of how humans relate to each other as individuals. When the story of suffering is about one child in Dafur, we can relate to them as an individual, who "but for the grace of god there go I" In other words, we can put ourselves in their shows. We can't relate to the story of of eight children because we aren't eight people and therefore it's not possible to personalize the story in the same way and relate to it as we would if the story were of one child. I appreciate that you're pursuing this topic, but I think some of your assumptions and theories about why people don't have as much compassion for larger groups of people might be missing the mark.
On Mar 9, 2014 Seth wrote:
I"People expect that helping eight victims costs more than helping one, so imposing a donation request created an incentive to turn off compassion. "... I think the issue of people not feeling compassion for larger numbers of people is not because of perceived compassion fatigue, but because of how humans relate to each other as individuals. When the story of suffering is about one child in Dafur, we can relate to them as an individual, who "but for the grace of god there go I" In other words, we can put ourselves in their shows. We can't relate to the story of of eight children because we aren't eight people and therefore it's not possible to personalize the story in the same way and relate to it as we would if the story were of one child. I appreciate that you're pursuing this topic, but I think some of your assumptions and theories about why people don't have as much compassion for larger groups of people might be missing the mark.