Compassion fade


Compassion fade is the tendency to experience a decrease in empathy as the number of people in need of aid increase. As a type of cognitive bias, it has a significant effect on the prosocial behaviour from which helping behaviour generates. The term was developed by psychologist and researcher Paul Slovic.
This phenomenon can especially be observed through individuals' reluctance to help when faced with mass crises. Accordingly, directly linked to the idea of compassion fade is what Slovic, along with Deborah Small, refer to as the collapse of compassion, a psychological theory denoting the human tendency to turn away from mass suffering. Slovic also introduced the concept of psychophysical numbing—the diminished sensitivity to the value of life and an inability to appreciate loss—by taking a collectivist interpretation of the phenomenon of psychic numbing to discuss how people respond to mass atrocities.
The most common explanation for compassion fade is the use of a mental shortcut or heuristic called the 'affect heuristic', which causes people to make decisions based on emotional attachments to a stimulus. Other explanations for compassion fade include affective bias and motivated emotion regulation. Other cognitive biases that contribute to compassion fade include the identifiable victim effect, pseudo-inefficacy, and the prominence effect.
Compassion fade has also been used in reference to "the arithmetic of compassion."

Overview

According to Paul Slovic,

Definition

Compassion fade, coined by psychologist Paul Slovic, is the tendency of people to experience a decrease in empathy as the number of people in need of aid increase. It is a type of cognitive bias that explains the tendency to ignore unwanted information when making a decision, so it is easier to justify.
The term compassion in this case refers to compassionate behaviour—that is, the intention to help or the act of helping. In this way, compassion fade can be explained by the cognitive processes that lead to helping behaviour. First is the individual's response to victim group, followed by motivation to help, which therefore generates the intention or act of helping. A conceptual model of helping highlights the self-concern and concern for others as mediators of motivation. Within the compassion fade theory, people tend to be influenced by:
  • the anticipated positive effect
  • concern for others
  • the perceived impact

    Context

The concept of compassion fade was introduced in 1947 through a statement commonly attributed to Joseph Stalin "the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."
Traditional economic and psychological theory of choice is based on the assumption that preferences are determined by the objective valuation of an item. Research in the 1960s and 1970s by psychologists Paul Slovic and Sarah Litchfield first looked at the emotional mechanisms in risk-assessment and developed the theory of preference construction, people tend to unequally weigh possible alternatives when making a decision.
The term psychic numbing was coined in 1997 to describe the non-linear relationship between provision of aid and the number of lives at risk. It explains how valuation of lives are cognitively perceived: each life decreases in marginal value as the number of victims increase. In the early 2000s, research by behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman found that people have different emotional and cognitive reactions to numerical information. Similar research by Slovic in 2007 demonstrated people's emotional responses decreased as the number of lives increase which led to the development of Compassion fade.

Compassion fade and mass crises

Compassion fade may especially be observed through individuals' reluctance to help when faced with mass crises, as a response to the number of victims involved in an event is determined by the balancing of self-interest and the concern for others. According to the concept of confirmation bias, people tend to consider self-interest alongside concern for others. An apathetic response following a large number of victims is considered to be normal because people have a limited capacity to feel sympathy; hence, conversely, an emotional response results in the individual's willingness and ability to help.
Accordingly, directly linked to the idea of compassion fade is what Slovic, along with Deborah Small, refer to as the collapse of compassion, a psychological theory denoting the human tendency to turn away from mass suffering.
One paper, written by Slovic and Daniel Västfjäll, sets out a simple formula for the collapse:
here the emotion or affective feeling is greatest at N = 1 but begins to fade at N = 2 and collapses at some higher value of N that becomes simply 'a statistic.'
Also linked to compassion fade and the collapse of compassion is the phenomenon of psychic numbing, the tendency for individuals or societies to withdraw attention from past traumatic experiences or future threats. Accounting for how people respond to mass atrocities, Slovic adapted the concept of psychic numbing and introduced the idea of psychophysical numbing, the diminished sensitivity to the value of life and an inability to appreciate loss. In other words, according to Slovic, the "more who die, the less we care."
Researchers proposed that in the human mind, large groups are almost staggering and therefore they rather participate in regulating their emotions to limit their overwhelming levels of emotions due to their experiences. This is because individuals tend to draw out no emotion regulation compared to that of the groups.

Measurements

Valuation as a function of victim numbers

Compassion fade contradicts the traditional model for valuing life that assumes all lives should be valued equally. Empirical data on charitable giving found that donations are not linearly related to the number of victims but rather decrease as the number of victims increase. This concept termed psychophysical or psychic numbing. A psychophysical numbing function depicts the number of lives at risk as a function of the value of life saving. In accordance to the theory of compassion fade, the function illustrates a decreasing marginal increase as the number of lives at risk increase. For example, when one life is at risk, the value is $100; when ten lives are at risk, the value decreases to $80; and when fifty lives are at risk, the value decreases to $50. Compassion fade explains this as people's perception that, as the number of lives in need of aid increases, individuality decreases and thus the value of the life decreases.
Effects of compassion fade on the valuation of victim numbers is seen through the singularity effect. Research showed as more information about the group size is provided, it more negatively affects the valuation of lives.
Other studies that investigated compassion fade with smaller victim numbers were not effective when using this prototype because it is not difficult to picture comprehensive images of victims with smaller number increases.

Valuation as a function of human lives

Compassion fade can be conceptually measured with the number of lives as a function of emotional response. The traditional model for valuing human lives would assume emotional reactions and the number of lives are positively correlated. However, research found people do not have the same cognitive and emotional response to the number of victims in need. The increasing marginal decrease in emotional response to the number of lives at risk is the foundation for the theory of compassion fade.
Research by Paul Slovic found the loss of a single identifiable appears elicits a greater emotional response where as people grow apathetic as the number of lives at risk increase because it is too emotionally distressing to comprehend. Similar research suggests that compassion fade occurs as soon as the number of victims increases from one.
The negative relationship between emotional response and valuation of human lives explains why life is not valued equally. It conceptually explains why compassion fade fails to initiate emotional processes that lead to helping behaviour. Effects of this relationship can be seen through The Singularity Effect and Pseudo-inefficacy.

Causes

The most common explanation for compassion fade is the use of a mental shortcut called the 'affect heuristic', which causes people to make decisions based on emotional attachments to a stimulus.
While in the past there has been a view that humans make decisions in line with the expected utility hypothesis, current theories suggest that people make decisions via two different thinking mechanisms outlined in the dual process theory. Accordingly, compassion fade is an irrational phenomenon that is carried out through system-1 thinking mechanisms. System 1 is characterised by fast, automatic, effortless, associative thinking patterns and is often driven by emotions; in contrast, system 2 is a more effortful, slower process whereby initial thoughts are challenged against other known knowledge, leading to rational and considered decisions. It is this emotional element of system 1 that leads people to see the effects of compassion fade, as humans make decisions based upon the affect and feelings of emotion over the facts of the situation.
Other explanations for compassion fade include: affective bias and motivated emotion regulation.
The collapse of compassion happens because people actively, perhaps subconsciously, regulate their emotions to withhold the compassion they feel for the groups of people who suffer.

Mental imagery and attention

Compassion is experienced greatest when an individual is able to pay more attention to and more vividly picture a victim. Psychological research into choice theory found that vivid mental stimuli plays a large part in processing information. Given the human ability to feel compassion is limited, more vivid mental images are closely related to greater empathy. Single, individual victims tend to be easier to mentally depict in greater detail. A large number of victims is more difficult to picture so it becomes more depersonalised causing the individual to feel apathetic and empathy to stretch thin.
Studies on cognitive biases categorise this tendency as a "heuristic" to explain that people make decisions based on how easily the information is to process. It is easier to process information about a single target versus an abstract target that in effect loses the emotional meaning attached to it.
Similar studies have demonstrated when an individual is presented with a number of single victims in a group they tend to experience less empathetic concern towards any member. To recognise each victim individually a person must focus specifically on individual features. If the individual is unable to develop a cohesive image of these features, these images will not generate compassionate behaviour.