To Get Big Attention, Stay Small - Large-scale Tragedies Get Less Notice
Thursday, September 9, 2010 - 17:49
in Psychology & Sociology
A million dollars is difficult to imagine but if someone is charging $2 instead of one, that gets attention. Likewise, a quote attributed to communist USSR despot Joesph Stalin is "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."(1) And he should know, being responsible for 20 million deaths (starting with competitor Leon Trotsky) and so nestled comfortably between Mao and Hitler in world history, but is regarded favorably by some on left whereas a serial killer of a few is reviled by everyone. A group says they have validated that large-scale tragedies don't connect people emotionally the same way smaller tragedies do, called a "scope-severity paradox". read more