Why People Get Upset About The Wrong Stories

Why don’t we get emotional about tragic statistics?

“One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic”- Commonly attributed to Stalin

Let’s look at two stories.

After reading each of these stories, which one makes you feel the most sad? Which cause would you be more likely to donate money to? Do you value the lives of those in one story more than the other?

A rational thinker might conclude that the 23,000 homeless in Indonesia is a much sadder situation than the single 12 year old girl. Then again, human beings aren’t rational. In a rational world, our sadness would increase linearly based on the number of victims. If 1 person died, we would be sad. If 1,000 people died, we would be 1000 times sadder. But human beings aren’t machines, and our psychology isn’t rational.

Americans were collectively devastated by the 2,977 deaths on 9/11, yet the 425,000 (and counting) deaths from COVID19 don’t seem to have caused too much sadness in most people. British people were enraged by the murder of soldier Lee Rigby on British soil by a muslim extremest, but there was…