Study: Crime perceived as less serious when there are many victims.

[Kotze]

Punishment does not fit crimes with the most victims (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/02/ben-goldacre-bad-science-crime-punishment-empathy)
Loran Nordgren and Mary McDonnell wanted to see whether we perceive a crime as being more serious when more people are affected. Sixty students were given an article about a fraud case; in one version three people were defrauded by a financial adviser, in a second, 30. All other information in the story was the same in both versions.

You might imagine that someone who harmed more people would be deemed to deserve harsher treatment. But...

[Dimentio]

One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is statistic

This could have something to do with the monkeysphere...

[Kotze]

To curb the many-victims problem one could follow these steps:


Jury A selects the victim it deems the most representative.
Jury B makes a preliminary verdict based on that victim.
Jury B gets informed about the other victims and modifies the verdict.


Why not use a simple mathematical formula at step 3?
-Because a just formula wouldn't be as simple as a multiplier. For instance it makes a difference whether the victims are part of of one big incident or an incident series. Compare somebody who is guilty of crashing drunk into another car on 2 different days and hurting 1 person each time with somebody who is guilty of crashing drunk into another car 1 time and hurting 3 people in that car. So instead of a completely automatic formula I'd rather give the jury at step 3 a non-binding decision chart as a discussion guidance.

Any other ideas?

Comment snippet from over there:
It would be interesting to compare punishments where a corporation is responsible for one death compared to a person responsible for one death. Maybe I'm just biased about this but I would reckon the sentences would not be comparable, and that part of this is because death as a result of the processes of business is considered less worse than those by the direct hands of an individual. Is the same process at work - that it's easier to dislike and feel aggrieved by an individual that has wronged you, than it is by a collective.

[Luisrah]

I think I can explain why that happens.

When you show a kid almost dead of hunger in africa in a picture, you almost cry.
If someone tells you that 10 million people die of hunger every year, you won't cry. Heck, maybe you'll say it's a lot, but that's all.

The problem resides witht the sensations. In the first case you are seing the boy, skinny, with a large belly, his sad face, dirty and hungry. In the second case, you only get the general, because it's more people.
But even if they tell you of some specific details, you are not experiencing it.

That's why if someone has lived in a basement his whole life, literally, I'm thinking it's impossible for him to have a lot of real compassion for the hungry in africa, but if you send him there, it's very probable he'll turn into a volunteer or a revolutionary.

For example, a breakup with a message on the cell phone won't hurt much. If it's a phone call, it hurts more. But if it's live, it's much worse. What makes you sad isn't just the general, that you broke up, but the specific things, like the expression of your partners, the words he used, the way he said it, the tears, etc.
Atleast for me, what can be experienced leaves something more meaningful that what can't.

Che Guevara read all those marxist books at his mother/father's library. But that trip with his friend through South America, seeing the extreme poverty, experiencing it, played a much larger role in him becoming a revolutionary than the books actually. The books only guided him in which kind of active person he would be. A volunteer, a revolutionary, an assassin (lol) and which kind of revolutionary.

No wonder considering that sensations and representations have existed for a much longer time than concepts and language.
Perhaps another proof that matter is primary and conscience is secondary.