Explaining the Identifiable Victim Effect

@article{Jenni1997ExplainingTI,
  title={Explaining the Identifiable Victim Effect},
  author={Karen E. Jenni and George Loewenstein},
  journal={Journal of Risk and Uncertainty},
  year={1997},
  volume={14},
  pages={235-257}
}
It is widely believed that people are willing to expend greater resources to save the lives of identified victims than to save equal numbers of unidentified or statistical victims. There are many possible causes of this disparity which have not been enumerated previously or tested empirically. We discuss four possible causes of the identifiable victim effect and present the results of two studies which indicate that the most important cause of the disparity in treatment of identifiable and… 
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573 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
23
Background Citations
232
Methods Citations
6
Results Citations
25

573 Citations

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Sexual harassment is undergoing an identification revolution, as more victims choose to forego their anonymity and divulge their identity to the public. Research in social psychology on the…
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We draw out implications of the identifiable victim effect - the greater sympathy shown toward identifiable than statistical victims - for public finance. We first review research showing (1) that…
Who Is The Identifiable Victim?--Caste Interacts With Sympathy In India
Earlier studies have documented an “identifiable victim effect”-- people donate more to help individual people than to groups. Evidence suggests that this is in part due to an emotional reaction to…
Reasonable Disagreement about Identifed vs. Statistical Victims
People tend to contribute more—and think they have stronger obligations to contribute more—to rescuing an identified victim rather than a statistical one. Indeed, they are often disposed to…
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