Presenting a single person who will benefit from the charitable donation; rather than presenting a larger group, a vague unidentifiable beneficiary, or presenting statistics

Alternative tool name:

Tool variation:

Category: Info/communications

Sub-category: Bias

Relevant theories: Scope insensitivity, Dual systems: hot/cold, Identifiable victims bias

Type of evidence: Lab-charity, Hypothetical/intentional experiment, Meta-analysis/lit survey, Lab-charity, Meta-analysis/lit survey, Correlational-observational, Hypothetical/intentional experiment, Causal-observational (IV etc)

Evidence strength (ad hoc assessment): 8

Portraying an individual (child) raises more than conveying the total number affected. It also raises more than portraying multiple individuals.

“Spillovers?” Minimal evidence on whether IVE increases generosity to those other than the identified individual. (Bergh, 2018; see Erlandsson, Björklund, and Bäckström, 2015)

Prevalence:

Often relevant

• Argument-inconsistency in charity appeals: Statistical information about the scope of the problem decrease helping toward a single identified victim but not helping toward many non-identified victims in a refugee crisis context

• The Identifiable Victim Effect: A Meta-Analytic Review

• Sympathy And Callousness: The Impact Of Deliberative Thought On Donations To Identifiable And Statistical Victims

• The Identifiable Victim Effect: Causes And Boundary Conditions, Full text

• Helping A Victim Or Helping The Victim: Altruism And Identifiability, Full text

• , Full text

• , Full text

Contributors David Reinstein