Iconic photographs and the ebb and flow of empathic response to humanitarian disasters

Abstract

The power of visual imagery is well known, enshrined in such familiar sayings as "seeing is believing" and "a picture is worth a thousand words." Iconic photos stir our emotions and transform our perspectives about life and the world in which we live. On September 2, 2015, photographs of a young Syrian child, Aylan Kurdi, lying face-down on a Turkish beach, filled the front pages of newspapers worldwide. These images brought much-needed attention to the Syrian war that had resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and created millions of refugees. Here we present behavioral data demonstrating that, in this case, an iconic photo of a single child had more impact than statistical reports of hundreds of thousands of deaths. People who had been unmoved by the relentlessly rising death toll in Syria suddenly appeared to care much more after having seen Aylan's photograph; however, this newly created empathy waned rather quickly. We briefly examine the psychological processes underlying these findings, discuss some of their policy implications, and reflect on the lessons they provide about the challenges to effective intervention in the face of mass threats to human well-being.empathy | iconic photographs | humanitarian disasters | psychic numbing |

The ends of empathy: Constructing empathy from value-based choice

“…Empathy appears insensitive to statistical victims (Friedrich & McGuire, 2010;Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2007), and to multiple identified victims (Cameron & Payne, 2011;Dickert, Kleber, Peters, & Slovic, 2011;Dickert, Sagara, & Slovic, 2009;Kogut & Ritov, 2005;Markowitz, Slovic, Västfjäll, & Hodges, 2013;Rubaltelli & Agnoli, 2012;Smith, Faro, & Burson, 2013). These findings have been observed for empathy (Kogut & Ritov, 2005), compassion (Cameron & Payne, 2011;Västfjäll et al, 2014), and prosocial behavior (Galak, Small, & Stephen, 2011;Slovic, Västfjäll, Erlandsson, & Gregory, 2017), and have led some to conclude that empathy is incapable of scaling up.…”

Attitudes and Donation Behavior When Reading Positive and Negative Charity Appeals

“…Half of the participants read a negative appeal, including a story and the iconic picture of Aylan Kurdi (the child who was washed ashore in Turkey after drowning in an attempt to flee to Europe (Slovic, Västfjäll, Erlandsson, & Gregory, 2017). The final part of the appeal said, "You did not help Aylan, but you can prevent similar tragedies happening to other refugee children."…”

The Iconic Image in a Digital Age

“…The global reaction to the Kurdi imagery invites further elaboration of these debates, we would argue, especially with respect to the significance of such editorial processes for influencing public attention, and thereby governmental policy-making priorities. The widespread empathy perceived to have been engendered by these photographs -charitable donations to fundraising efforts for Syrian refugees increased dramatically (Slovic et al 2017), for example -seemed less beholden to the editorial processes deployed by news organizations than to the affective qualities ascribed to the imagery itself, typically expressed in a manner blurring the 'iconic' into the 'viral' in social media terms. How these images felt was what mattered, editorial voices frequently pointed out, the hurt they caused demanding urgent action, albeit for reasons these same voices struggled to articulate.…”