Perhaps it is also partially caused by the feeling that one person can't do anything to stop the deaths of millions. The problem is too big. But if there is that one starving person on the television, we can do something about that. We can help one person. Larger numbers become an abstraction and we think of it all as "one problem" we cannot solve. A single suffering individual is also "one problem" but it is solvable.

You are right Dave. But, this goes much deeper. To the Right Wing, Conservative, Christian to kill one OR one million is all the same. All you have to do afterwards is ask God to forgive you and your place in heaven is safe!!!

Right, Dave. And the study also exposes a more significant cognitive flaw. People helped the starving girl less when she was just one in a million than when she was alone, because we get more satisfaction from solving the smallest problem completely than solving a small part of a huge problem. It's a lack of perspective with proportions, like an optical illusion comparing the length of lines. People would take action to save 8 people in a group of 10 before they would attempt to save 20 people in a group of 100. It's a sort of moral perfectionism.

Since 911 more white people have been murdered in America by violent blacks than have died in Iraq and the World trade Center and Pentagon combined. 18,000 whites have been victims of violent murder by blacks since September 2001. (FBI Statistics on Violent Crime) 3,200 U.S. Soldiers have died in Iraq. We lost about 3,000 on 911.

Why is this not discussed? Why is this problem not solved? Why?

Ames you ignorant troll! No one prior to your post even mentioned Iraq. No one mentioned crime. You are using this board as a means to spout your horribly racist and irrelevant views. What would it take to get you to go away?

So, the topic is genocide. I for one find this particular aspect of our brains rather disturbing. I wonder if there is some way that our brains could be trained to recognize real issues and comprehend the incomprehensibly huge statistics of living in a society of 6.5 billion people.

Apparently, our brains are still stuck with their original baggage of thinking of the tribe of 200ish people and have not yet learned that there are now so many of us. I wonder whether this would require biological evolution or whether cultural evolution would be able to make the switch. The latter works in far fewer human generations, if we can do it.

I was thinking more about nonprofits using this info to their advantange. Instead of the whole 'Everyday thousands of Sudanese refugees....' they could go more for the old school, Christian Children's Fund approach: 'Meet Tia. Her family has been displaced and there is not enough food...' At the most and for honesty's sake, they could throw in somewhere 'and many others like her'. But by preventing those overwhelming numbers from filtering into the marketing and exploiting study's findings, nonprofits could probably bring in more contributions.
And, Misanthropic Scott, I think at this point a certain person should just be ignored. His goal is to derail progress while spreading misinformation and hate.

I SAW AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PREZ OF DARFUR- THIS GUY IS A SCUMBAG. I'M ALL FOR THE U.S. TAKING HIM OUT. 2 MILLION PLUS KILLED IS UNACCEPTABLE. I GUESS THE U.S. SHOULD BE "WORLD COP" IN THIS SITUATION, EVEN THOUGH IT MAY GO AGAINST THE LIBERAL FOREIGN POLICY APPROACH OF DOING NOTHING ABOUT EXTREME ISLAM AND HOPING NOTHING HAPPENS.