Exploring and Preventing Irrational Response to Disasters

The Problem and its Causes

Why do people respond so indifferently to major catastrophes, such as the genocide in Rwanda, floods in Asia, or famines in Africa, yet give generously to a neighbor who lost a house to fire, or a coworker downsized from a job?  

This surprising response (or lack of it) to human tragedy is taken up in Dan Ariely's second book, The Upside of Irrationality. Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, is well known for his book Predictably Irrational, which explores the faulty nature of human decision making, a predictably irrational process that is easily (and frequently) exploited by marketers, corporations and politicians. 

Dan's second book draws on his research and personal experience to describe irrational decision making and action taking. It also highlights ways to overcome these irrational tendencies. Chapter 9 ("On Empathy and Emotions: Why We Respond to One Person Who Needs Help but Not to Many") deals with parameters that contribute to a general apathy towards large tragedies, facets that limit our responsiveness to large-scale disasters, compared to smaller misfortunes at home. 


It appears that empathy, which determines how we respond to events, is dominated by emotions, rather than logic, and is affected by the following psychological factors:

• Vividness - how detailed and vivid the picture of suffering is. The more vivid, the more likely we are to empathize and react. In contrast, the vagueness of a long-distance look reduces empathy and response. 
• Closeness - physical proximity or group kinship to victims. We are much more likely to give money to trivial causes nearby, than to a much needier problem far away.
• The 'Drop in the bucket' effect - the inability to single-handedly and completely help the victims of a tragedy. In face of large needs which we can barely affect with individual action, we tend to shut down emotionally. Immense issues, such as providing clean water to people in most developing countries fall victim to this effect.

These factors distort our decision making in peculiar ways - the larger the problem, and the more analytic information is available, in form of data and statistics ("250,000 people are still homeless after the earthquake"), the less we respond with support and compassion. Issues become too abstract for emotions to comprehend. Rational thought and analysis block emotion-driven empathy. To quote Joseph Stalin (Ariely offers many other similarly enlightening quotes), "one man's death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic". 

Ariely's Proposed Solutions

Ariely, usually the optimist, comes up with a depressing conclusion - "We are not designed to care about events that are great in magnitude, take place far away, or involve many people we don't know", and offers a number of personal behavior modification solutions - ways individuals can modify the way they think about disasters and tragedies. The following are extracts and edited quotes:

"So what can we do as a possible solutions to the statistical victim problem - what hope to solve large scale humanitarian problems?"

• Try to change how we think and approach human problems ... try to think specifically about helping one suffering person.
• Try to counteract the "drop in the bucket" effect by re-framing the magnitude of the crisis in your mind - instead of the abstract problem of massive poverty, try to feed 5 people.
• Find the personal closeness to sufferers of a general problem.
• Come up with rules to guide behavior - create rules that will guide us to take the right course of action, even if it does not arouse our emotions. 

The last one is more relevant to organizations than individuals - for example, the UN can automatically deploy peace-keepers if a given number of people is affected by a violent conflict.

An Alternative Solution

Unfortunately, self improvement is much easier in theory than in practice. Most of us repeatedly fail in our efforts to change. Note, for example, the common fate of New Year's resolutions. 


Ironically, Ariely, in despair, may have stumbled on a possible answer:  "It would be nice ... if the next catastrophe were immediately accompanied by graphic photos of individual suffering ... if such images were available they would incite our emotions and propel us into action. But all too often images of disasters are too slow to appear, as was the case in Rwanda, or they depict a large statistical, rather than identifiable, suffering - think for example about Darfur. And when these emotion-evoking images finally appear on the public stage, action may be too late in coming. Given all our human barriers to solving the significant problems we face, how can we shake off our feeling of despair, helplessness or apathy, in the face of great misery ... So what can we do as a possible solutions to the statistical victim problem - what hope to solve large scale humanitarian problems?"


Today's technologies - digital cameras, cell phones, image sharing sites and social networks - make it possible to globally disseminate images in minutes. Technology can benefit further from some coordination by the community. A disaster response plan to distribute images together with vivid, detailed description of individual cases, has the potential to trigger public support and individual action. All that it takes is a little preparedness. After all, we already have a pretty good idea which areas are amenable to flooding, earthquakes, or famine - all we need to do is be ready when the next one hits - and remember that people care more about a single bleeding victim than about a million abstract sufferers...