Humans always amaze me. There are so many inherent biases and paradoxes to human behavior that don’t make any sense or have any rational basis. But they exist and we have them. And they exist contrary to what people believe.
Many years ago, I remember there was a young kid stuck in a well for days. The incident got great media coverage. Soon, the whole nation got involved. Rescue efforts went on for days and there was great celebration when the boy was finally saved days after being stuck in the well. Millions of people prayed for the stranger kid. And rejoiced when he was rescued.
Millions of kids in the same country die of various preventable causes. But hardly anyone gives attention or feels empathetic regarding them. They are all strangers like the kid that was rescued from the well. But hardly anyone bats an eye. This trend is the same all across the world. Why do people care deeply about one kid but be blind to the suffering of millions of similar kids?
Stories and Statistics
‘One death is a tragedy. A million is a statistic’ once said Joseph Stalin ( Stalin would be competing for head to head with Hitler in the all-time death count by genocide contest).
The amount of empathy one has is indirectly proportional to the scale of suffering. As more and more people suffer, we get less affected by suffering. Our empathy is maximum at an individual. And it decreases with an increase in individuals. I believe there are certain reasons behind it:
- Human beings are moved by stories and not statistics. Stories move you whereas statistics bore you. This is the pull of the sensational. It’s the reason that a kid stuck in a well makes a country empathetic from all directions whereas millions of much more brutal deaths due to avoidable conditions go unnoticed. The kid has a story whereas other kids do not.
- I was not the teacher’s favourite student in school and I often would be punished for not doing my homework. I would be made to stand in the class or sometimes to my good luck, outside the class where no teacher could see me. But the shame I experienced reduced drastically every time someone else accompanied me to those regular punishments. Shame was divisible and it got divided every time a friend accompanied me for the punishment. I believe this is the same case with empathy. Empathy like other emotions such as shame, success, etc get divided with increase in participants. It is so because the suffering of the individual becomes less unique to us. Since, he is not alone to suffer and many more share the same fate, we somehow become less empathetic.
- Empathy increases with information. The more unique the problem, the more empathy one gets. Due to the media coverage, we knew about that kid a lot more than others. And we have only space for so much information in our head. Plus there are thousands of things vying for our attention in the world. Information increases familiarity which is important for increasing empathy.
The individuals had a story attached to them. They had a character and personality we knew and could relate to. It’s the same reason that the death of the character of Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan led many people to take out their tissues whereas in the same movie, much more brutal deaths of ordinary soldiers or supporting actors in the opening and final battles failed to have as big an impact. Movies are shown in a way that the audience relates to the protagonist a lot more than less paid and struggling supporting actors (one can easily predict that they will be killed in such movies to build up emotional stakes in the finale). Even though all the deaths in reality are equally devastating to their loved ones but a few deaths among them do stand out. If Tom Hanks would have survived in the movie, it could have been seen as a ‘Happy movie’ despite the brutal deaths of many Allied and Axis soldiers(but it would not win Oscars most likely if Hanks survived).
Not strong enough
This is a scary thing if one notices. You would expect people to care a lot more if a certain group or an area suffers terrible disasters but paradoxically, they would care less.
This is not something that makes me anxious or disillusioned with the way of workings of the world. For if it was directly proportional to the scale of suffering, we all would have been drowned in grief for most of the time. There is a limit to the grief we experience. And it is hyperlocal. Also, it is directly proportional to the information we have. And grief is not the best of emotions to experience on a long-term basis.
I have realized that I am not strong enough to consistently fight this bias and feel more empathetic to human suffering on a large scale. I have tried hard but to my shame, I have realized that I will consistently fail at this. It would be a terrible way to function if I am constantly drowned in grief. And life has so much more brilliant things to offer.
The death of someone known will always affect you more than the suffering of a larger group. That is how has evolution shaped us, to be more protective and concerned about the tribe you are a part of. But my failure to feel more empathetic should not lead to the lack of awareness of its existence. Just because the emotions are not strong enough from my side shouldn’t make me rationalize that their suffering isn’t real. Hence, I would always assume that suffering in such cases is magnitudes more than my brain makes me believe. And I just can’t imagine it. For this bias (Let’s call it empathy bias), the awareness of its existence is enough.