Identifiable Victim Effect

​

What is Identifiable Victim Effect?

The Identifiable Victim Effect is a larger donation to one named person than to statistics about many people.

The bias is simply that people care inconsistently.

Small, Loewenstein, and Slovic print that sentence after refusing a stronger claim. They write that the effect cannot be called a bias to give too much to an identifiable victim, or too little to statistical victims. There is, they say, no correct dollar value of a life in this choice. The counted inconsistency is the donation. On the form, the choices are $0, $1, $2, $3, $4, or $5, taken from five one-dollar bills just paid for a technology survey. A useful picture is two letters and the same envelope. One letter names Rokia, a 7-year-old girl from Mali, and shows her picture. The other letter gives counts: children in Malawi, hunger in Zambia, people displaced in Angola, and people in Ethiopia who need food. Neither letter is a feeling score. The five questions they did ask, from 1, “Not at all,” to 5, “Extremely,” did not show a significant effect of the name or of the lesson. Availability Heuristic is a different page, about what comes to mind. This PDF does not score that.

​

Identifiable Victim Effect in 3 Depths

• Beginner: A named child with a picture drew more of a $5 payment than a page of counts. That difference is a mean gift. It is not a sympathy score.
• Practitioner: Before you add a lesson, or paste the counts under the name, write which cell you are copying. In this paper both additions pulled the named gift down. Neither one raised the page of counts.
• Advanced: The identifiable margin of $2.12 mixes the lesson and no lesson. The name alone, with no lesson, is $2.83. The feelings analysis was not significant. A shop, a household, or another year is not this F.

​

Origin

The Identifiable Victim Effect, in this PDF, is the name for giving more when the person in need is specific than when the need is a statistic. The authors open with three stories and do not attach a study file to the first two. They write that in 1987 “Baby Jessica” received over $700,000 in donations after she fell in a well near her home in Texas. They write that £275,000 was raised for the medical care of Ali Abbas, a wounded Iraqi boy, during the Iraq conflict. They cite Song (2002) for more than $48,000 contributed for a dog stranded on a ship adrift on the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. The Register Guard page was not opened. The lesson script later in the paper says Baby Jessica fell in 1989, not 1987. This page does not merge the two years. They then say the name is already in use. Jenni and Loewenstein (1997) are cited for explaining the effect and for a proportion result. That article was not opened, so this page does not take a coefficient from it. The proportion idea, as this PDF states it, is that 10 deaths in a town of 200 feel larger than 10 deaths in a population of many millions, because 10 of 200 is easier to read as a share. An identifiable victim, they write, is 1 of 1. Base Rate Neglect is a different mistake, about ignoring a stated rate in a probability problem. These letters are not that problem. A second factor, they write, remains after the reference group is held still. They summarize Small and Loewenstein (2003): in a dictator game, gifts were larger when the recipient had already been determined than when the recipient was about to be determined, and a Habitat for Humanity ask drew more when the family “has been selected” than when the family “will be selected.” No name was given in either Habitat line. They summarize Kogut and Ritov (2005a): one identified person, with a name and a face, drew more distress and more money than an identified group, and more than an unidentified person or an unidentified group. Those PDFs were not opened. No shekel amount from them is printed here. Affect Heuristic is the discussion’s later resonance. Slovic, Finucane, Peters, and MacGregor (2002) were not opened, and this study does not score affect as a separate donation.

​

Key Points

Four splits keep a named child, a lesson, a page of counts, and a feeling rating from becoming one slogan.

​

Applications

These four moves follow splits the 2007 paper reports. They are not a claim that a fund, a classroom, or a household copies $2.83 or F(1, 115) = 6.75.

​

Case Study

The counted case is Study 1, with the same letters counted again in Study 3. An experimenter approached people seated alone in the student center of a university in Pennsylvania and offered $5 for a short survey. The sample is 121. The experimenters knew that more than one letter existed. They did not know which letter a given person received, and they were not told the hypotheses. The person finished the technology survey, received five one-dollar bills, a receipt, a blank envelope, and a charity letter, and was left alone to give any whole-dollar part of the $5. The statistics letter used text from the Save the Children website, which this page did not reopen. The appendix prints four claims: food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than three million children; severe rainfall deficits in Zambia resulted in a 42 percent drop in maize production from 2000, and an estimated three million Zambians face hunger; four million Angolans, one third of the population, have been forced to flee their homes; more than 11 million people in Ethiopia need immediate food assistance. The name letter showed a picture and said the gift will go to Rokia, a 7-year-old girl from Mali, who is desperately poor and faces severe hunger or starvation. It said Save the Children will work with her family and community on food, education, basic medical care, and hygiene education. The method still says every participant was told the money would go toward the food crisis in Southern Africa and Ethiopia, and that the money went to Save the Children. Figure 1 prints four means. Statistics, no lesson: $1.17. Statistics, lesson: $1.26. Name, no lesson: $2.83. Name, lesson: $1.36. The lesson’s example was Baby Jessica in 1989 and over $700,000, set against thousands of children in future automobile accidents. The introduction’s Jessica sentence says 1987. Cell counts are not printed. The donation ANOVA uses F(1, 115) with N = 121. The contrast uses t(117). The feelings ANOVA uses F(1, 114). This page does not repair those degrees of freedom. Study 3 kept the letters and dropped the lesson. People seated alone in the university center and courtyard, 159 of them, saw the name, the statistics, or the name with the statistics added. The means are $2.38, $1.14, and $1.43. The name exceeded each of the other two letters. The joint letter did not exceed the statistics. The lesson inside these two studies is narrow. A named child with a picture drew more of the $5 than the counts. Teaching the effect, or printing the counts under the name, each brought the named gift down toward the counts. The counts did not rise to meet the name.

Insight, in this situation, seems to breed callousness. The boundary is the same article. The feelings means did not follow the dollars, the university is not named, and the envelopes were not a gift tracked to a household in Mali.

​

Boundaries and Failure Modes

The Identifiable Victim Effect, as this PDF lets us count it, is a set of mean gifts from people at one university in Pennsylvania who had just earned $5. Two uses overshoot the article. One exports $2.83, $2.38, $1.14, or $1.43 onto a fund, a classroom, a household, or another year. The other treats a lesson, or a page of counts under a name, as if it were the name-only cell. Study 2 asked whether the lesson’s wording had done the work. All 99 people received a lesson. Half read that people react more strongly to specific people than to statistics. Half read that people react less strongly to statistics than to specific people. The second script says “the 10,000 children,” not “thousands,” and it still says 1989. Figure 2 means, for the “more” frame, are $1.12 statistical and $1.00 identifiable. For the “less” frame they are $1.43 statistical and $1.37 identifiable. The ANOVA found no significant main effect of identifiability, F(1, 95) = .073, p = .79, no significant main effect of frame, F(1, 95) = 1.00, p = .32, and no interaction, F(1, 95) = .01, p = .94. The paper also prints F(1, 95) = .073, p = .79, for the frame inside the statistics, and F(1, 95) = 1.009, p = .32, for the frame inside the name. The sentence just above those two tests says it tested simple effects of identifiability within each frame. Only one pair of F lines is printed. This page does not invent the missing pair, and it does not treat the “less” wording as a reversal. Framing Effect is a different page. This frame test was not significant. Study 4 primed a mode of thought and did not teach the effect. Of 165 people on the same campus, each still paid $5, half worked five calculation items. The sample item: if an object travels at five feet per minute, how many feet does it travel in 360 seconds? Half answered feeling items. The sample item asks for one word about "baby." Figure 4 means: statistics, calculation $1.54 and feeling $1.45; name, calculation $1.19 and feeling $2.34. The priming main effect is F(1, 160) = 3.49, p = .063, partial eta-squared = .02. Victim type is F(1, 160) = .87, p = .35, partial eta-squared = .01. The interaction is F(1, 160) = 4.67, p < .04, partial eta-squared = .03. Calculation versus feeling on the name is printed as F(1, 160) = 3.49, p < .01, partial eta-squared = .05. The prime on the statistics is printed as F(1, 160) = .87, p = .35, partial eta-squared = .01. The same F appears on two different lines, twice. N = 165 and the error degrees of freedom are 160. This page does not repair either pair. The introduction’s $700,000, £275,000, and $48,000 are the authors’ examples. The news files were not opened. The epigraph quotes Mother Teresa, “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will,” and prints no source. That line is not a checked speech. The discussion’s “second best” idea, that identification may raise total aid even while it concentrates aid, cites Loewenstein, Small, and Strnad (2006). That chapter was not opened. It is not a result of these four studies. A last limit is the neighbor. Bystander Effect is a failure to help when other people are present. Studies 1 and 3 sat people alone. No bystander count is in this PDF. Zero-Risk Bias is a preference for wiping out a small risk. No risk was priced here. The proportion story and the “drop in the bucket” phrase are the authors’ readings of other papers. Those papers were not opened, and Study 4 was their attempt to separate a calculating mindset from a large denominator. The feeling prime still did not lift the statistics.

​

Common Misconceptions

Three readings turn a lesson, a joint letter, or a sympathy question into a different study.

​

Related Concepts

These six pages sit beside the Identifiable Victim Effect. Each one asks a different question.

​

One-Line Takeaway