Event Title
The Moral Impact of Visual Numbers
Location
Parker-Reed, SSWAC
Start Date
30-4-2015 9:00 AM
End Date
30-4-2015 10:55 AM
Project Type
Poster
Description
What one ought to do is not always what a normal person does. This has been evident in human behavior throughout history, but until recently there were no precise, scientific reasons to explain why or how people act immorally in very similar ways. Here, I will examine one seemingly logical moral norm put forth by Peter Singer: that we should help all others the same amount regardless of insignificant differences such as location. I will then describe experiments I conducted to explain why people almost always disobey that logical, moral norm. My original belief was that we are more likely to help one person in need than many people in need because we are emotionally overwhelmed and unattached to many needy people as compared to one person. This hypothesis was unproven in initial testing, leading me to add another element to my hypothesis, namely that we are unable to emotionally understand raw numbers alone, but can connect to visualizations of those numbers. After more experimentation, I was able to prove this second version of my hypothesis.
Faculty Sponsor
John Waterman
Sponsoring Department
Colby College. Philosophy Dept.
CLAS Field of Study
Humanities
Event Website
http://www.colby.edu/clas
ID
1706
The Moral Impact of Visual Numbers
Parker-Reed, SSWAC
What one ought to do is not always what a normal person does. This has been evident in human behavior throughout history, but until recently there were no precise, scientific reasons to explain why or how people act immorally in very similar ways. Here, I will examine one seemingly logical moral norm put forth by Peter Singer: that we should help all others the same amount regardless of insignificant differences such as location. I will then describe experiments I conducted to explain why people almost always disobey that logical, moral norm. My original belief was that we are more likely to help one person in need than many people in need because we are emotionally overwhelmed and unattached to many needy people as compared to one person. This hypothesis was unproven in initial testing, leading me to add another element to my hypothesis, namely that we are unable to emotionally understand raw numbers alone, but can connect to visualizations of those numbers. After more experimentation, I was able to prove this second version of my hypothesis.
https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/clas/2015/program/177