Why do good people, so compassionate towards individuals in need, become apathetic when the number of needy grows large? While there is, of course, no single reason for apathy in the face of mass tragedy, in this research we focus on one fundamental mechanism that may play a role in many, if not all, episodes of mass-tragedy neglect. This mechanism involves the capacity to experience affect, the positive and negative feelings that combine with reasoned analysis to motivate our actions. Our experimental paradigm examines real donations to starving children in Africa. The number of victims ranges between 1 and 8. In earlier research, we found that donations were greatest when the contribution requested is to help a single child and declines as the number of victims increase. Our proposed experiments are designed to test a theoretical model in which attention and affect interact with psychological distance or "connectedness" to create empathy and willingness to donate. Experimental manipulations will vary the number of victims, the seriousness of their plight, and the "connectedness" between donors and victims and between victims to see how these factors determine attention to those in need and actions to help them.
