Why Hearing About Mass Tragedies Decreases Empathy
The mechanics of psychic numbing, explained
“One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
This saying captures how many of us feel about human tragedies.
When it’s about one specific person going hungry, empathy is sparked. You want to help. You connect to their story, feelings, and make an effort to try and put yourself in their shoes.
But when it’s about thousands or even millions starving?
This is when human brain switches off. As Hungarian scientist Albert Szent Gyorgyi said, “I am unable to multiply one man’s suffering by 100 million.”
This has a helpful and unhelpful aspect.
The Pandemic Was a Classic Example of How We Become Desensitized
Have you noticed how, over the course of the COVID pandemic, your perception of what was going on changed? I certainly saw it in myself.
In March 2020, I was — like most of the world — following the newest developments about the virus. I remember reading the viral (pun not intended) article, Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now by Tomas Pueyo and discussing it with friends over the phone as we realized how serious things have become.
At the time, the new cases weren’t reported accurately. When they were, the daily number amounted to tens, then hundreds. During this time, I was the most cautious and following COVID-safety rules strictly. Fast forward a few months — and it all changed.
Even though I rationally knew that things have gotten worse, the tens of thousands cases daily made less of an impression on me.
This was a pretty common reaction. As the pandemic spread and the death toll rose, people’s reactions to bad news news have blunted. Even the number of negative posts on Twitter significantly declined.
“Research has repeatedly shown that we become desensitized as the number of individuals affected by particular events increases,” Dr. Diana Concannon, psychologist and Dean of the California School of Forensic Studies, said in a 2020 interview. “We don’t process large numbers as well as we do smaller numbers. This, in part, explains why we have witnessed genocides, have not had an effective response to climate change, and see some refusing to wear masks during the current crisis.”
Detaching when faced with big numbers is pretty common. What are the psychological reasons for this?
The Mechanics of Psychic Numbing
Paul Slovic is one of the most respected researchers of the barriers that stop us from engaging with humanitarian aid. He co-founded a project called The Arithmetic of Compassion. Its mission is to “raise awareness of psychological obstacles to compassion, including psychic numbing, pseudoinefficacy, and the prominence effect.”
The prominence effect applies mostly to those with the power to run countries and governments. In this article, I’ll leave it out.
However, the two other biases have very real impact on how (and if) you and I decide to engage with large-scale human tragedies.
Let’s start with psychic numbing. In short, it’s the effect big numbers have on our capacity for empathy and care. Many people will be inclined to help one specific person that is in their sphere of influence. But as the number of those in need increases, we get overwhelmed and disengage.
The Arithmetic of Compassion has illustrated this phenomenon using graphs. The first two of them envision how we theoretically “should” respond to an increase in numbers — for example, in the context of genocide.
The second set of graphs shows what actually happens, based on widely validated research:
As you can see, it’s not just that our compassion doesn’t scale as the number of victims increase. Actually, its quite likely to drop. One study has observed that compassion faded as soon as the number of people in need went from one to two.
Even though this desensitization can sound horrible, it’s actually an adaptive mechanism. “It allows us to continue to function amidst adversity,” Concannon says. Especially when a situation is ongoing — like it’s been with the pandemic, war in Ukraine, and now the Israel-Hamas conflict — our brains need to get used to it.
“The human brain naturally adjusts to novel circumstances as they become chronic,” Michael Mazius, PhD from Wisconsin says. From this perspective, psychic numbing is normal and needed. It doesn’t serve our nervous system to be constantly activated by bad news.
From the civic engagement point of view, however, this hinders our ability to care.
The Pseudoinefficacy of Social Changemakers
When doing something good, we want to feel like we’re making a difference. Acts of kindness may benefit the giver as much as the receiver — there are many studies that confirm this.
It’s easy to feel like you made a difference when you help one specific person. Your favor, money, or time translates directly into impact on their lives.
But when you’re aware this person is one of many, the rewards associated with helping get lost. It showed up acutely in Slovic’s 2007 experiment. The study tested how much money people would give in a few different scenarios.
When they were asked to donate to a 7-year-old girl named Rioka in Africa, study respondents were the most generous. But when they received the information that Rioka was one of millions of people needing help, their generosity dropped. Paul Slovic and Daniel Västfjäll describe this phenomenon as “pseudoinefficacy” — failing to perceive that the donation still makes a difference.
Analyzing the experiment, they wrote:
“Why did this occur? Perhaps the presence of statistics reduced the attention to Rioka essential for establishing the emotional connection necessary to motivate donations. Alternatively, recognition of the millions who would not be helped by one’s small donation may have produced negative feelings that inhibited donations.”
Sometimes, the preference for singular stories can work in favor of those needing help. That’s when people connect to one person’s story and, through it, become aware of a larger issue. One example was when a photograph of Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian boy who drowned as his family fled the war-torn country, circulated the media.
Slovic and his team observed that, around the date of Kurdi’s death, Google search terms like “Syria” and “refugees, peaked. People’s attention was drawn to the wider crisis. According to Pacific Standard, “the team saw basically the same effect in donations to a Swedish Red Cross campaign to aid Syrian refugees: There was a more than 100-fold increase in the number of donations per day after photos of Kurdi were published, and the average donation increased by a factor of 55 (…).”
This was a temporary effect, though. As time from Kurdi’s death passed, the pseudoinefficacy kicked in again. With no sense of agency over helping millions of people, the public returned to the desensitized status quo.
How to Hack Your Numbness and Be a Caring Person
When we fail to act in times of humanitarian crisis, we lose part of our humanity. We lose touch with the bigger picture and get comfortable in our safe bubble.
The mechanisms such as psychic numbing and pseudoinefficacy are very real. We can’t just pretend they don’t exist. The real question, then, is this:
How to work with our psychological limitations, so we can still act and feel like we’re making a difference?
The Arithmetic of Compassion team has some tips.
1. Become aware of psychic numbing.
We can’t solve problems we’re not aware of. Try and observe how psychic numbing happens for you and how you lose engagement when confronted with big numbers.
2. Raise awareness in others.
If you found the information in this article helpful, share it with your friends and family. You can also talk to them about psychic numbing and pseudoinnefficacy — teaching others is a great way to consolidate your knowledge.
3. Harness the power of testimony.
Testimonies are short statements expressing how you are associated with a particular issue and what parts of your personal experience make you feel connected to it. Be practical, not abstract in your statement, to help other people understand it.
4. Use digital media and technology to connect to people in need.
Social media are often misused — but you can also harness their potential to get emotionally involved in a topic. You may be able to learn first-hand perspective on an overseas conflict from someone who’s living it. By finding their testimonies online, you can understand how they feel and not just consume facts presented by mainstream media.
5. Use structured decision-making techniques.
Slovic and others meant this point mostly for policy makers — but it can be helpful to everyone. If you get overwhelmed by deciding whom and when to help, be more strategic with your decisions. You could decide in advance what factors will influence your decision (time, money, your personal connection to the cause) — and then systematically review them whenever you need to decide whom and how to help.
6. Appreciate that even partial solutions safe whole lives.
No matter what cause you have in mind, you won’t be able to help everyone. To accept this is liberating. Remember that if you’re saving one life or helping one person, this is already a lot. Don’t focus on what you can’t do. Tend to what you can.
7. Get involved.
At CivLead, we’re committed to helping you find the best way to make a difference. Join our community of changemakers and follow this publication to take the first step towards a better world.
Want to Make a Better World That Works for All?
Take our quiz to find out your Changemaker type. We’ll send you self-care and community service recommendations based on your results.
