The identified victim – what people really value

Dickert and colleagues (2015) demonstrated participants' preferences for donation allocation principles.

The question at hand was: Should donations increase linearly with beneficiary numbers, or should smaller groups receive more per person in a sub-linear fashion?

Participants overwhelmingly chose the linear function, rejecting the sub-linear option that aligns with scope neglect.

This finding strongly indicates that people fundamentally believe in the consistent value of saving lives, regardless of the number already saved.

Scope neglect is a product of our intuitive biases, not our deliberate, considered judgments.

Source: Effective Altruism and The Human Mind by Schubert and Caviola.