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Stalin, Mother Teresa, and Rob Portman: What do they have in common?

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Rob Portman, Republican senator from Ohio and one-time contender for Romney's would-be VP slot, announced on Friday that he has reversed his very public stance against gay marriage. As the well-known conservative stated in an Op-Ed piece on Friday, he now believes that "if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn't deny them the opportunity to get married."

What's the reason behind this seemingly sudden change of heart? According to Portman, it can all be credited to his son, Will -- an openly gay 21-year-old man who came out of the closet to his conservative father two years ago.

This seems very similar to other political idiosyncrasies that we've seen in the past when there are family members involved. Dick Cheney's support of gay marriage within an otherwise conservative platform is largely due to his love for his lesbian daughter, Mary. And these two politicians' positions on gay marriage are not all that different from the political views of Sarah Palin, mother of a disabled child who is opposed to all government spending -- except, of course, when that spending is earmarked for programs benefiting disabled children.


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These views have often been criticized by the media, given snarky names, and demeaned as narcissistic or self-centered. And sure, it is certainly possible that these politicians (and the many others like them) are consciously picking and choosing their political platforms in a selfish way to maximize self-interest. However, considering what we know about social psychology, it's fairly short-sighted to assume that these political about-faces are always the conscious result of these intentionally selfish motives. More likely, they are actually the result of a common psychological phenomenon that impacts all of our decisions -- the identifiable victim effect.

Broadly speaking, the identifiable victim effect states one thing: Individual stories will have a far greater sway on our attitudes, intentions, and behavior than any long list of numbers, statistics, and facts. For example, if you see an ad for Save the Children with a picture of a single, emaciated Malian child named Rokia, you will donate significantly more to the charity (about 50% more, on average) than if you see a message listing the statistics about how many people are starving throughout all of Africa.

So why do individual stories have such a greater pull on us than statistics -- especially when, rationally, learning about millions of people being impacted by something should impact your attitudes and actions much more than hearing about just one?

First of all, these individual stories are vivid. Stories about people are graphic, full of individual details, and typically involve strong visual imagery. Similarly, our experiences with close loved ones are vivid; we know a lot about their lives and individual personalities, and we come into frequent contact with them. Decades of research has informed us that vivid information has a much stronger influence on what people think and believe than dull, boring statistics. Even if the facts themselves are supposed to be "shocking," numbers on a page will never hit us at the same vivid level as a picture of a wounded puppy or a video of a crying little girl. Pure information will never really impact us in the same way that seeing something happen to our friends or loved ones will.

Secondly, in addition to being vivid and full of graphic details, individual accounts are emotional, and emotion is an invaluable component of persuasion. For example, men and women asked to donate money to support the charity March of Dimes would consistently donate more money if they were asked outside of a church as they walked in to confession (aka while they felt fairly guilty) than if they were asked when they were walking out of confession (aka when their guilt had already been resolved). We use emotions as a cue for what we should think and do. If you feel guilty? Do something good to resolve it. If you feel happy? Do something good to maintain that positive state. Without even realizing it, our emotions will sway our attitudes and actions -- and no facts or numbers will manage to hit our emotions as strongly as an individual story of heartache and woe, or the thoughts, feelings, and lives of the people that we love and care about. In fact, as I've written about before, there are entire lines of research devoted to informing us about all of the ways in which our emotions impact our moral and political judgments. (Spoiler Alert: They impact them a lot.)

So what does a bunch of research on Mali, March of Dimes, and starving children have to do with Portman's new attitude towards gay marriage? Well, it will all click together once we realize that the broad logic underlying the identifiable victim effect is not necessarily about the presence of "victims" themselves. Rather, the main point is that it's harder to work up the empathy and the emotional connection to care about numbers and figures to the point where they will actually sway your opinions and political actions. Plenty of journalists have remarked recently that Portman is showing a lack of empathy because he couldn't bring himself to care about other people's children. Maybe so -- and, certainly, there are plenty of people whose attitudes towards important political issues aren't solely determined by the lives and interests of their friends and family. After all, you can certainly be in favor of legalizing gay marriage without being closely related to someone who is gay. But even so, the fact remains that it's much easier to become emotionally invested in a cause when there's a name and a face tied to it -- especially when that name and that face belong to someone who is particularly close to you. The more you're emotionally invested in something, the more you can identify a single person being impacted by the issue in vivid, emotional detail -- and the more likely that person is to sway your attitudes.

What this means is that the tendency for people like Portman and Cheney to only care about gay marriage once they have children who are affected, or the tendency for people like Palin to support government spending on a cause that would impact her own son, is not out of the ordinary. In fact, it's a core aspect of human cognitive biases. Of course issues that impact your own family members are going to have a greater pull on your beliefs and political attitudes. They are going to involve individual people, they are going to be more vivid, and they will be more emotional. It doesn't have to be knowingly selfish, and it doesn't have to involve conscious self-interest (although it could). But, to give these three (and the many others like them) the benefit of the doubt, it could simply be that they, like most others, don't receive the emotional pull from numbers and figures that they do from close family members.

The point is, regardless of political affiliation, it's not necessarily a sign of narcissism or selfishness if someone is susceptible to the effects of identifiable victims or individual stories. It's just a cognitive bias that all of us face, which we need to be aware of if we wish to understand why people make certain exceptions to their political beliefs and how we can get people to care about certain political issues if they are not closely related to anyone being affected by them. It's certainly not out of the ordinary for people to fall victim to identifiable victims. So, if you are a Republican and you wish to defend Portman from people claiming that he lacks empathy, it should comfort you to know that his empathic response is actually incredibly normal. And, if you are a Democrat and you are arguing that it angers you when politicians like Portman only hold empathic views for issues that personally impact them, you should know that it's now your job, if you wish to be an effective persuader, to figure out how to create identifiable stories and vivid accounts for the issues that you care about, rather than relying on numbers and figures and wondering why they don't evoke a more powerful reaction from politicians.

After all, the identifiable victim effect isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Even Mother Teresa fell victim to it. As she put it, "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will."

Of course, Stalin also noted that "the death of a single Russian soldier is a tragedy, [whereas] a million deaths is a statistic.” But, eh -- let's stick with quoting Mother Teresa.

For More On The Identifiable Victim Effect:

Dan Ariely: The Identifiable Victim Effect in Action

Andy Goodman (at Contributions Magazine): Stories or Data: Which Makes the Stronger Case?

Nicholas Kristof: Save the Darfur Puppy

References:

Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). "Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment." Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Jenni, K.E., & Loewenstein, G. (1997). Explaining the identifiable victim effect. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 14, 235-257 DOI: 10.1016/S0167-6687(97)89155-X

Slovic, P. (2007). 'If I Look at the Mass I Will Never Act': Psychic Numbing and Genocide. Judgment and Decision Making, 2, 79-95 DOI: 10.1037/e718332007-003

Harris, M.B., Benson, S.M., & Hall, C.L. (1975). The effects of confession on altruism. The Journal of Social Psychology, 96, 187-192 PMID: 1186138

Batson, C. (1990). How social an animal? The human capacity for caring. American Psychologist, 45 (3), 336-346 DOI: 10.1037//0003-066X.45.3.336

Melanie Tannenbaum is a freelance writer and science communications consultant currently living in the Bay Area. She received her Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2015, where her research focused on the science of persuasion and motivation regarding political, environmental, and health-related behavior. For more info, see her personal website.

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