I am currently reading "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into
Opportunity for Women Worldwide" by Sheryl WuDunn, and one of the quotes
on page 99 seemed relevant to this discussion.
> Frankly, we hesitate to pile on the data, since even when numbers are
> persuasive, they are not galvanizing. A growing collection of
> psychological studies show that statistics have a dulling effect,
> while it is individual stories that move people to act. In one
> experiment, research subjects were divided into several groups, and
> each person was asked to donate $5 to alleviate hunger abroad. One
> group was told the money would go to Rokia, a seven-year-old girl in
> Mali. Another group was told that the money would go to address
> malnutrition among 21 million Africans. The third group was told that
> the donations would go to Rokia, as in the first group, but this time
> her own hunger was presented as part of a background tapestry of
> global hunger, with some statistics thrown in. People were much more
> willing to donate to Rokia than to 21 million hungry people and even
> a mention of the larger problem made people less inclined to help
> her.
>
> In another experiment, people were asked to donate to a $300,000 fund
> to fight cancer. One group was told that the money would be used to
> save the life of one child, while another group was told it would
> save the lives of eight children. People contributed almost twice as
> much to save one child as to save eight. Social psychologists argue
> that all this reflects the way our consciences and ethical systems
> are based on individual stories and are distinct from the part of our
> brains concerned with logic and rationality. Indeed, when subjects in
> experiments are first asked to solve math problems, thus putting in
> play the parts of the brain that govern logic, afterward they are
> less generous to the needy.
I wrote a brief article about this quote for a wiki publication, Chance
News, and also included the Joseph Stalin quote:
> A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.
http://chance.dartmouth.edu/chancewiki/index.php/Chance_News_58
See item #9, Statistics make you stingy.
--
Steve Simon, Standard Disclaimer
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Thursday, December 17, 2009, 11am-noon, CST.
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Thursday, January 21, 2010, 11am-noon, CST.
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