Article Analysis Essay on the Elusive Power of the Individual Victim

Introduction

It is better believed that our mind is more inclined and willing to apply more resources to help the lives of victims that they easily identify that when to save a larger group. It is a theory that describes the nature and value of human life and how we perceive. Identifiable victim effect is the tendency of persons to offer more significant aid to individually recognisable individuals rather than a vague defines group. It is a general theory of perception of life that explains why single individual life is more likely to be identified help reach out than a group. In most cases, the group is usually taken as a statistic measure rather than be accorded the same value the single individual would be given. The article that I will use in this analysis is 'The elusive power of the individual victim by P. Sol Hart, Dan Lane, and Sedona Chinn."

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Review of the Article

The article provides different study cases that try to explain the various causes of identifiable victim effect. It presents the study and analysis of the identifiable victim effect systematically as a scenario that has not been taken into consideration by many researchers. The article has critically given the differences that lie between identifiable and statistical lives. The report suggests how previous research conducted on the same topic has favoured more the effect that an individual has when there is a particular crisis at hand. The studies have suggested more on how help appeals more to an individual victim rather than a group.

In the article, the authors try to point out the various strategies that activists, journalists, and philanthropic institutions use in the process of creating support and sympathy for people who are in need. It is a case study that tries to study and evaluate how when the number of persons in need goes up, emotions and the behaviour of helping also may, in turn, decrease. The research journal suggests how various appeals of charity create attention to the individual other than a group of persons are more likely to have a more significant effect on the promotion of helping those in need. As charitable institutions have occasionally showcased and stressed on how common issues have an impact on large masses of the society, this research tends to show how the efficiency of messages from identifiable victim effect has helped in introducing a different style of helpful analogies centred around the high power and impact of individual persons.

Having that several findings try to explain the effects of specific individuals, the article thus seeks to provide a better understanding of seeing specific special effect contrary to other victims in the process of helping others. The report conducted many study types of research that try to examine how appeals involving several individuals influence the nature in which policy support, emotional responses, willingness to volunteering and the willingness to makes are decision are all related. By so doing the article has taken a view on the possible confounds that surround in the previous literature and the test elements that have been presented to be contingent on the topic (Hart, P. S., Lane, D., & Chinn, S. 2018).

Critique of the Topic

Despite how elaborate the authors have tried to bring out the various components that attribute to the topic, some inconsistencies are still evident in the research which is not identified fully. For instance, instead of aid, much emphasis on the specific person can translate to reduced support for policy generation for those in assistance as compared to tales only come up with statistics of the global agenda. The research does not provide the basis that explains how the manipulation of several persons who need charitable aid can distract the emotional reactions and their perception to help. The findings of the study instead give a mixed emotional response that does not provide the real picture of events.

How Process May Be Evolutionary Adaptive

Having a greater appeal to helping specific individuals rather than a group of people is an evolutionary reaction that can be adaptive to any individual as long as the events of such action increasingly continue to be relevant the subject in question. When people have affection to a specific link with an object, the object in question becomes more easily integrated into decision making. Affection assists individuals in the understanding of everything around us, and this forms the intuitive to judge on how to react. It is an analogy that explains how identifiable victim effect can be evolutionary adaptive because it all relates to our emotion and how we perceive and respond to them. Some of the typical real-life examples that can be categories as cognitive heuristic include an educated guess and use of common sense. One positive aspect of cognitive heuristic is that cognitive heuristic has helped us as individuals to quickly identify ourselves with our emotions and the way we perceive things and react to situations at all time. The negative effect to cognitive heuristic is that although the mind should be channelled to respond to events that involve a group and individuals in the same way, cognitive heuristic tends to be bias and only favour help when dealing with individuals rather than a group of persons.

References

Hart, P. S., Lane, D., & Chinn, S. (2018). The elusive power of the individual victim: Failure to find a difference in the effectiveness of charitable appeals focused on one compared to many victims. PloS one, 13(7), e0199535.