No, you're not a sociopath if your reaction to hearing about a high number of casualties after a catastrophic event is just a shrug — apparently, you're just human. The results from a study at Duke University published recently in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology imply that there's a cap for human empathy — but is there anything we can do about it?
A sample of 173 Duke students – 44 percent female and 56 percent male – participated in the social experiment. The subjects were then split into two groups. Half of the first group – "forecasters" – were asked to predict, on a scale of 1 to 9, how much sadness they would experience if they read an article about the deaths of five people as opposed to 10,000, while the second group were asked vice-versa; the forecasters guessed that readers would feel sadder about the higher number of deaths. The second half of the participants then read the actually utilized number of deaths the forecasters used for their predictions. The results? The second group experienced no difference in emotion.
However, experts are not so sure that this is a hardwired trait. Carlos Navarette, a professor of psychology at Michigan State University who helped author the study, suggests that humans have a difficult time processing numbers in relation to emotional judgment and that indicators of individuality, such as pictures, can widen our capacity for empathy.
"Our brains are evolved to deal with small numbers, definitely not 10,000," he said. "You can make rational choices about killing one to save five but not between 10,000 and five."
Guess it's time to bulk up on our numbers game, people, if only for the sake of humanity.
Photo: Blue Mountains Local Studies | Flickr
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