Putting a face on animal suffering - and why it's sometimes just one face

I noticed this gem from the AAAS meetings this week, and it made me think about animal suffering, advocacy and the whitewashing that often takes place in the media or public consciousness. I'll explore this topic in a multi-part post. This is part 1: one and only
A professor from the U of Oregon asks "How do we stop genocide when we begin to lose interest after the first victim?" His research suggests that public outcry over genocide and human suffering is partly a numbers game:

Follow your intuition and act? When it comes to genocide, forget it. It doesn't work, says a University of Oregon psychologist. The large numbers of reported deaths represent dry statistics that fail to spark emotion and feeling and thus fail to motivate actions. Even going from one to two victims, feeling and meaning begin to fade, he said.

I think we see similar trends in animal protection. The billions of chickens slaughtered each year are never mentioned in the media. If we bring it up in conversation, people are as likely to roll their eyes as to gasp in dismay.

"We go all out to save a single identified victim, be it a person or an animal, but as the numbers increase, we level off,"

Yet if one puppy is rescued from a burning building hundreds of people will clamor to donate and adopt. I have seen this chalked up to species differences - to traits that humans find more or less attractive. Sometimes I figure it's dissonance. In this example of differences between chickens and the puppy,the pain of the chickens has to be reconciled against the eating of said chickens. By contrast, the average person's feelings about dogs and his or her treatment of them is probably less disparate. I've seen some data on the species traits argument. But it appears that's is only part of it: we may have an inherent bias in favor of the individual over a group.

Slovic points to this bias as a major factor in responses to genocide. Though he uses examples of human genocide, the similarities to the plight of other animals logically fits in this framework as well. The article continues:

However, models based on psychology are unmasking a haze on the issue. One model suggests that people react very strongly around the zero point. "We go all out to save a single identified victim, be it a person or an animal, but as the numbers increase, we level off," he said. "We don't feel any different to say 88 people dying than we do to 87. This is a disturbing model, because it means that lives are not equal, and that as problems become bigger we become insensitive to the prospect of additional deaths."

[emphasis added]

We aren't talking about diminishing returns here, but an extinction or collapse effect.

"The studies just described suggest a disturbing psychological tendency," Slovic said. "Our capacity to feel is limited." Even at two, he added, people start to lose it.

What does this mean for animal protection?

To be continued.

For a brief article about Slovic's research, see "How do we stop genocide when we begin to lose interest after the first victim?"