How do we decide who to help? Recent research shows that the affect (good-bad feelings) associated with the need is linked to helping behaviors. In particular, donors tend to give more to single indentified (with a picture and a name) victims and less to larger groups of needy individuals. Our research shows that valuation of lives is associated with affective feelings (self-reported and psychophysiological) and that a compassion collapse (decrease in feeling and action with increasing need) may begin as early as N=2. In a third study, compassion collapse was reversed by describing many lives in a more unitary fashion. Our capacity to feel sympathy for people in need appear limited, and this form of compassion collapse can lead to apathy and inaction, consistent with what is seen repeatedly in response to many large-scale human and environmental catastrophes.

Daniel Västfjäll, PhD is a Research Scientist at Decision Research, Eugene, OR and a Full Professor of cognitive psychology at Linköping University, Sweden. He is director of the Center for Behavioral- and NeuroEconomics in Linköping University. His research interest center around decision making, risk perception, and emotion.