Why We Ignore Mass Suffering

An excerpt from Vox -

A psychologist explains the limits of human compassion
Why do we ignore mass atrocities? It has to do with something called “psychic numbing.”
Updated by Brian Resnick

I often report on political psychology. And in my conversations with scientists, I’ll often ask: “What research helps you understand what’s going on in the world?” The answer — whether it’s pegged to the refugee crisis abroad or the health care debate at home — very often involves Paul Slovic.

Slovic is a psychologist at the University of Oregon, and for decades he’s been asking the question: Why does the world often ignore mass atrocities, mass suffering?

Slovic’s work has shown that the human mind is not very good at thinking about, and empathizing with, millions or billions of individuals.

“THE VALUE OF A PERSON'S LIFE DECLINES PRECIPITOUSLY WITH NUMBER. IS THAT WHAT WE WANT?”

That’s why it’s not surprising six out of 10 Americans support a travel ban that, in part, bars refugees from entering America. That many lawmakers aren’t horrified by the possibility of booting tens of millions from health insurance. That the world looked on as millions died in war and genocide in Darfur. That we haven’t really grappled as a nation with the opioid epidemic, which killed 33,000 in 2015.

When numbers simply can’t convey the costs, there’s an infuriating paradox at play. Slovic calls it “psychic numbing.” As the number of victims in a tragedy increases, our empathy, our willingness to help, reliably decreases. This happens even when the number of victims increases from one to two.

https://www.vox.com/explainers/2017/7/19/15925506/psychic-numbing-paul-slovic-apathy