The Singularity Effect of Identifiable Victims

可识别受害者的奇点效应

• 批准号: 1127509
• 负责人: Paul Slovic
• 金额: $ 33.9万
• 依托单位: Decision Science Research Institute
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-01 至 2015-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1127509&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Singularity; Effect; Identifiable; Victims

The term "identified victim effect" refers to people's greater willingness to help identified victims (victims about whom they have some information) relative to unidentified persons. Past research suggests that the effect is restricted to single victims; meaning that identifying a single victim (by adding a name or a picture) increases helping, while the identification of individual members of a group has less effect on helping. This project explores the roots of the preference for helping a single, identifiable person, examining the development of this preference in young children within individualistic and collectivist societies. Hence the research intends to offer some insight into a most important facet of human social behavior: the willingness to help others in need. It aims to make significant theoretical contributions to understanding the sources of the identifiable victim effect and to the literature on the development of pro-social behavior.The research team is conducting nine experiments. Some examine young children?s willingness to help identifiable single and group targets experiencing the same need to help clarify whether the identifiable victim effect develops with age and if so, when, in childhood, this tendency begins to appear. The research addresses the question of whether society can impart the feelings that are needed for enhancing caring for groups of people in need. In addition, the research explores whether the preference for helping the single identifiable victim may be a result of culture and education. Specifically, Western societies' individualism (according to which the individual person is the purpose for which society exists) may enhance people's caring for the one victim and cause the lack of relatedness to the group. If that is the case, it is expected that people in societies that hold more collectivistic views (emphasizing the primacy of the group or community rather than each individual person) will show no such preference. In addition to its theoretical contribution, the proposed research has important practical implications for increasing the frequency and strength of pro-social behavior as part of optimal human development.

“已确定的受害者效应”是指相对于身份不明的人，人们更愿意帮助已确定的受害者（他们有一些关于受害者的信息）。过去的研究表明，这种效果仅限于单个受害者;这意味着识别单个受害者（通过添加姓名或图片）增加了帮助，而识别一个群体的个人成员对帮助的影响较小。该项目探索了帮助单一、可识别的人的偏好的根源，考察了个人主义和集体主义社会中幼儿这种偏好的发展。因此，这项研究旨在对人类社会行为中最重要的一个方面提供一些见解：帮助有需要的人的意愿。该研究旨在为理解可识别的受害者效应的来源和亲社会行为发展的文献做出重要的理论贡献。研究小组正在进行9个实验。有些人检查小孩子？的意愿，以帮助可识别的单一和群体的目标，经历了同样的需要，以帮助澄清是否可识别的受害者效应发展与年龄，如果是这样，当，在童年，这种趋势开始出现。这项研究解决了社会是否能够传递加强对有需要的群体的照顾所需的感情的问题。此外，研究还探讨了帮助单一可识别受害者的偏好是否可能是文化和教育的结果。具体而言，西方社会的个人主义（根据个人是社会存在的目的）可能会增强人们对一个受害者的关怀，并导致与群体的关系缺失。如果是这样的话，那么在更倾向于集体主义观点（强调群体或社区而不是每个人的首要地位）的社会中，人们预计不会表现出这种偏好。除了理论贡献外，这项研究还对提高亲社会行为的频率和强度具有重要的实际意义，这是人类最佳发展的一部分。