As terrible as mankind can seem sometimes, we’re actually not all that bad and help others quite often. I’m sure you’ve donated to charity at least once in your life, and that’s something you probably have in common with someone you think is terrible. Altruism is a wonderful thing, but oftentimes, we’re doing it all wrong.
I don’t know you, but I’m assuming if you had the chance to help one child or two starving children for the same price, you’d help two. Well, what if you could help five kids instead of two? How about 100 kids instead of 5? Or even 1,000 kids instead of 100? My guess is you’d always pick the larger number, but the problem is that a flaw in our thinking has us regularly help the smaller number, and this flaw is known as the identifiable victim effect.
If starving kids aren’t your thing, maybe it’s helping animals, the homeless, or people suffering from mental illness. Whatever your cause of choice is, you need to understand the identifiable victim effect if you want to do the most good. Once I learned bout this issue with my reasoning and behavior, it completely changed how I looked at how I allocate my time and money towards good causes.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot while reading the book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by the incredible Robert Putnam. This book was recommended to me by Robert Frank while we chatted about his phenomenal book Success and Luck on my podcast. Putnam’s book discusses one of my favorite topics, which is how the American meritocracy is a myth, and it’s affecting children all over the country. But one thing that started bothering me about the book was how much of it was telling individual stories.
Each chapter in the book has a really detailed story of a child who lives in poverty, is from a terrible neighborhood, or has other issues that will hold them back from succeeding. While each story was deeply moving, I’m someone who tries to look at the big picture. When you zoom in on these individual stories, it doesn’t show the full scope of what’s going on in our city, country, or even the world.
Then, I was thinking how it really doesn’t matter what I think because this was probably the best way for Robert Putnam to write the book. Why? Because of the identifiable victim effect.
The origin of the identifiable victim effect actually comes from marketing. As someone with a background in marketing, I’m surprised how many people don’t realize how much marketing has to do with psychological manipulating. The great news is that this manipulation can be used for good, and that’s how the identifiable victim effect was discovered.
Charity organizations and non-profits were struggling for a long time to get donations. They knew people wanted to give, but people weren’t giving all that much. Then, here comes economist and professor Thomas Schelling who discovers that when we’re exposed to the harm of a particular person, it invokes “anxiety and sentiment, guilt and awe, responsibility and religion, [but]…most of this awesomeness disappears when we deal with statistical death”.
So, this is when charities stopped telling people about the hundreds or thousands of people suffering and decided to tell people the story of one specific person. Rather than telling you about all the starving children in Africa, they started telling you what a day looks like for one specific child. They also started putting one child or one person on pamphlets rather than large groups of people. And once they did this, the money started rolling in.
This makes absolutely no rational sense because as we discussed earlier, all of us would rather help more people if we had the chance. It’s crazy how we don’t care about the masses until we focus on one specific person. Think about some of the most famous photos out there from tragic events. We hear about Syria and Syrian refugees on a regular basis, but think about how many people started paying attention when they saw this image:
All of us would agree that Joseph Stalin was objectively one of the worst people in history, so it’s frightening how true one of his most famous quotes is.
"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."
The identifiable victim effect really started bothering me with the rise of GoFundMe. On a regular basis, we hear these feel-good news stories of someone who needs money for a medical procedure, to keep their home, to get a car, or just to get off the streets. The more money people donate, the better we feel and are reminded that humanity isn’t as awful as we think. In some cases, one person or one family is given tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Each time I see one of these news stories, while everyone is giving each other high fives about their generosity, I’m sitting back and thinking about how utterly irrational we are. I think about all of the people who could be helped with this money. Instead of helping one person or one family, we could help so many with that same amount of money, but the identifiable victim effect clouds our judgment.
One recent story that comes to mind is the story of Dasha Kelly, a mother who lives here in my city of Las Vegas. During the eviction crisis back in August, she started a GoFundMe to keep her home for her and her kids. After her touching story went viral, she raised over $200,000. With millions of Americans facing eviction, how does this make sense?
Note: While researching this story, I discovered that Dasha lied about these being her children and is being sued by the actual mother. This is yet another reason why it’s not a good idea to give this much money to a single person because these stories are all-too-common.
But it’s not always terrible. Sometimes, the person or family makes a public statement that they’re only going to use as much of the money as they need, and then the rest is going to one or more organizations.
The identifiable victim effect is a double-edged sword, so we need to recognize it and be a little more rational with how we spend our time and money with our kindness. When you hear about one of these touching stories, pause for a moment, and ask yourself some simple questions like, “Why is this person in this situation?” and “How many others are in this exact same situation?” By doing this, you’ll be able to zoom out and see the larger issues at hand. Many times, it’s due to a broken system here in the United States or issues happening in other parts of the world.
We can use the identifiable victim effect to our advantage to ensure we don’t miss the bigger picture. When you hear about a statistic that seems too large for you to do anything about, try to imagine the story of one specific person in that situation. Sometimes, you can go out and find that story.
For example, the mental health and addiction crisis are issues I care about, but with over 90,000 overdose deaths in 2020, it can seem overwhelming. Then, when you add the 44,000 suicides and all of the people suffering from mental illness, it seems impossible. But by thinking about just some of the stories of these people and their families, I’m able to look into causes and organizations that are trying to help.
Lastly, if any of this gave you an “aha” moment, I highly recommend reading some books on effective altruism. A great place to start is The Life You Can Save and The Most Good You Can Do by Peter Singer as well as Doing Good Better by William MacAskill. And if you’re looking for a place to donate, check out GiveWell.org, which uses research to find the best organizations to give to.
I’ve been working on organizing all the books I’ve read, and I have multiple lists of books on becoming a better thinker. There are lists for education, social issues, critical thinking, self-deception, and biases. For the rest of the categories, click here.
I’m always open for a conversation and to be shown what I might be missing or where I may be wrong, so feel free to email me at TheRewiredSoul@gmail.com