Scope insensitivity: The limits of intuitive valuation of human lives in public policy.

Dickert, Stephan; Västfjäll, Daniel; Kleber, Janet; Slovic, Paul

doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2014.09.002

Cited by 49 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…From a utilitarian perspective in which each life has added value, empathy should rise proportionally to those in need. This appears to be what people predict (Dunn & Ashton-James, 2008) and what some morally prefer (Dickert et al, 2014). Yet in the challenging contexts that may seem to require a strong prosocial response-such as disasters and genocides-empathy decreases as the number of victims rises (for a review of this phenomenon, see Cameron, 2017).…”

Section: Empathy and Innumeracymentioning

confidence: 65%

The ends of empathy: Constructing empathy from value-based choice

Cameron¹,

Cunningham²,

Saunders³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Empathy, or the ability to understand and resonate with the experiences of others, has long been considered by philosophers and scientists to be an important part of human morality. We present a new framework that explains empathy as resulting from motivated decisions. Drawing on models of cybernetic control, value-based choice, and constructionism, we suggest that empathy shifts depending on how people value and prioritize conflicting goals. We generate novel predictions about the nature of empathy from the science of goal pursuit, and address its apparent limitations. Empathy appears less sensitive to suffering of large numbers and out-groups, leading some to suggest that empathy is an unreliable ethical guide. Whereas these arguments assume that empathy is a limited-capacity resource, we suggest that apparent limits of empathy reflect byproducts of domain-general goal pursuit. Arguments against empathy reflect a misguided essentialism: they mistake our own choices to avoid empathy for intrinsic features of empathy, treating empathy as a capricious emotion in conflict with reason. We suggest that empathy results from a rational decision, even if its rationality is bounded, as in many decisions in everyday life. Empathy may only be limited if we choose to avoid pursuing empathic goals.Ends of empathy 3 "Empathy isn't just something that happens to us-a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain-it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It's made of exertion, the dowdier cousin of impulse." -Leslie Jamison (2014), The Empathy ExamsIn the summer of 2016, empathy went viral. The world learned about Harambe, a silverback gorilla in the Cincinnati Zoo who was shot and killed by zookeepers in an attempt to save the life of a child who had fallen into his enclosure. In the aftermath of the incident, people around the world expressed support for Harambe in a variety of ways, ranging from social media posts to charitable donations to Harambe tattoos. Empathy for Harambe became a meme in its own right. On the other hand, many people appeared to lack empathy for the zookeepers, the child, and the child's mother, to the point that some even issued death threats. This example reveals a broader point about empathy (and the lack thereof): it can feel effortless, contagious, a passion to which we are subject, rather than something we choose or control.Empathy-our ability to understand and resonate with the experiences of others-is typically considered an emotion, which can entail the conceptual baggage that many people associate with emotion. People often see emotions as passions that are out of our control, as something that happen to us. This idea has much precedent. The term derives from the Greek empatheia, which takes feeling or passion (pathos) and directs it at or into (em) someone else;this was adapted to the German Einfühlung ("feeling into"), and translated into English as empathy (Wispe, 1987). These traditions emphasize continuity of empathy with emotions, and in so doing, ca...

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Section: Empathy and Innumeracymentioning

confidence: 65%

The ends of empathy: Constructing empathy from value-based choice

Cameron¹,

Cunningham²,

Saunders³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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“…Although these existing studies have investigated the effect of collective guilt on outgroup helping, further research is needed to determine if collective guilt and responsibility can motivate cosmopolitan helping. First, further research is needed because: (a) cosmopolitan helping necessarily requires help to be given to outgroups much larger than those used in previous research; and (b) prior research indicates that the larger a suffering group is, the more difficult it is to motivate help for that group (Dickert et al, 2014; Dunn and Ashton-James, 2008). This means that it is unclear if the findings from existing research on collective guilt will also apply in contexts relevant to cosmopolitanism.…”

Section: The Effect Of Collective Guilt On Helpingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motivating cosmopolitan helping: Thick cosmopolitanism, responsibility for harm, and collective guilt

Faulkner

2016

International Political Science Review

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Political theorists and philosophers have recently directed their attention to understanding how individuals may become motivated to act as ethical cosmopolitans. A prominent theory – termed “thick cosmopolitanism” – argues that the realization one’s ingroup is responsible for causing harm to people in distant nations will increase cosmopolitan helping behavior. Additionally, thick cosmopolitanism suggests that guilt may explain this effect. This article presents the first experimental tests of these claims, and is the first research to use experiments to investigate cosmopolitan helping. Results demonstrate a substantial, but previously unrecognized, limitation to thick cosmopolitanism. Specifically, reminders of ingroup responsibility for causing harm not only increased individuals’ acceptance of responsibility and collective guilt, which indirectly enhanced cosmopolitan helping (Studies 1 and 2), but simultaneously increased dehumanization of the harmed outgroup, which indirectly diminished helping (Study 2). These conflicting processes resulted in no overall increase in cosmopolitan helping, contrary to the predictions of thick cosmopolitanism.

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“…We hypothesize that costs and benefits are represented differently by donors, such that changes in costs may not be matched by changes in benefits when the number of lives at risk increases. According to egalitarian moral perspectives and related forms of utilitarianism, all lives should be valued equally (e.g., Baron & Szymanska, ; Sinnot‐Armstrong, ), and additional lives at risk could be valued even higher if their loss threatens the survivability of an entire group (P. Slovic, Fischhoff, & Lichtenstein, ; S. Dickert, Västfjäll, Kleber, & Slovic, ). However, despite agreeing that every life should be valued equally, people often fail to anticipate the decrease in willingness to give when the cost for the donor increases.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetric cost and benefit perceptions in willingness‐to‐donate decisions

Rubaltelli

Hysenbelli

Dickert

et al. 2019

Behavioral Decision Making

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Charitable giving entails the act of foregoing personal resources in order to improve the conditions of other people. In the present paper, we systematically examine two dimensions integral to donation decisions that have thus far received relatively little attention but can explain charitable behavior rather well: the perceptions of cost for the donor and benefit for the recipients. In line with current theories in judgment and decision making, we hypothesize that people weigh these dimensions subjectively and perceive them asymmetrically, consistent with prospect theory. Costs for the donor are typically perceived as losses, whereas benefits for recipients are perceived as gains. In four studies, we presented several scenarios to participants in which both donation amounts (costs) and number of lives helped (benefits) were manipulated while keeping the ratio of costs and benefits constant. Results from Studies 1 and 2 showed that willingness to help decreased as donation amounts and number of lives helped increased. Additionally, Studies 3 and 4 provide evidence for a solution to reduce the asymmetry and increase donation amounts as the number of lives at risk increases.

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Scope insensitivity: The limits of intuitive valuation of human lives in public policy.

Cited by 49 publications

References 55 publications

The ends of empathy: Constructing empathy from value-based choice

The ends of empathy: Constructing empathy from value-based choice

Motivating cosmopolitan helping: Thick cosmopolitanism, responsibility for harm, and collective guilt

Asymmetric cost and benefit perceptions in willingness‐to‐donate decisions

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