Why do people sometimes give generously to a cause — and other times give nothing at all?
That's a timely question, because humanitarian groups fighting the Ebola outbreak need donations from people in rich countries. But some groups say they're getting less money than they'd expect from donors despite all the news.
Psychologist Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon has some answers that may surprise you.
In one study, Slovic told volunteers about a young girl suffering from starvation and then measured how much the volunteers were willing to donate to help her. He presented another group of volunteers with the same story of the starving little girl — but this time, also told them about the millions of others suffering from starvation.
On a rational level, the volunteers in this second group should be just as likely to help the little girl, or even more likely because the statistics clearly established the seriousness of the problem.
"What we found was just the opposite," Slovic says. "People who were shown the statistics along with the information about the little girl gave about half as much money as those who just saw the little girl."
[For more of this story. written by Shankar Vedantam, go to http://www.npr.org/blogs/goats...eed-but-not-millions]
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