Michaela Huber, Leaf Van Boven, Peter McGraw, and Laura Johnson-Graham recently posted their intriguing article “Whom to Help? Immediacy Bias in Judgments and Decisions About Humanitarian Aid” (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 115, pp. 283-293, 2011) on SSRN.
People exhibit an immediacy bias when making judgments and decisions about humanitarian aid, perceiving as more deserving and donating disproportionately to humanitarian crises that happen to arouse immediate emotion. The immediacy bias produced different serial position effects, contingent on decision timing (Experiment 1). When making allocation decisions directly after viewing to four emotionally evocative films about four different humanitarian crises, participants donated disproportionately more to the final, immediate crisis, in contrast, when making donation decisions sequentially, after viewing each of the four crises, participants donated disproportionately to the immediate crisis. The immediacy bias was associated with “scope neglect.” causing people to take action against relatively less deadly crises (Experiments 2 and 3). The immediacy bias emerged even when participants were warned about emotional manipulation (Experiment 3). The immediacy bias diminished over time, as immediate emotions presumably subsided (Experiment 2). Implications for charitable giving, serial position effects, and the influence of emotion on choice are discussed.
Download the article for free here.
Related Situationist posts:
- Psychic Numbing
- Too Many To Care
- Numbed By Numbers
- Heart, Brain, or Wallet…How Do You Vote?
- An Apathy Epidemic
- The Situation of Altruism
- Psychology of Inequality
- The Interior Situational Reaction to Inequality
- The Religious Situation of Compassion and Generosity
- The Financial Situation of Empathy
- Can Meditation Make Us More Compassionate?
- God’s Situational Effects
- Do Doctors Lack Empathy?
- Racial bias clouds ability to feel others’ pain
- Students’ Situations Leave Them Less Empathetic (Situationist)
- The Interior Situation of Complex Human Feelings
- The Neuro-Situation of Violence and Empathy
- It’s Hard to Step into Someone Else’s Shoes
- The Situation of Morality and Empathy
- The Situation of Caring
- New Study Looks at the Roots of Empathy
The Situationist 