Mental Elevation
Psychic Numbing
One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.
Grounded in the research on psychic numbing
the gist
Psychic numbing is the brain’s failure to scale empathy. The more people affected by something, the LESS you feel — compassion maxes out fast, then flatlines or even drops.
the science
Researched by Paul Slovic. Related findings: the 'identifiable victim effect' (one named person moves you more than a faceless mass) and 'scope insensitivity' (people will give about the same to save 2,000 birds as 200,000). Compassion can literally fade as the numbers grow.