Individual differences in reasoning style as a moderator of the identifiable victim effect

The identifiable victim effect refers to people's greater helpfulness towards personalized, single victims compared to aggregated, statistical victims. A field study tested recent claims that analytical processing might undermine support for identified victims by suppressing emotional responses (Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2007). Individual differences in analytic ("rational") processing style moderated the effects of different request types on donations to a Zambian relief fund. Less-analytic processors donated more to a single identified victim than to requests describing statistical victims or a combination of both; more-analytic processors showed no differences. Self-reported emotional responses, however, did not support an affect-mediated account of these effects. Use of proportional reasoning strategies is discussed as a possible alternative account of current and past findings.