Neural Underpinnings of the Identifiable Victim Effect: Affect Shifts Preferences for Giving
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Date
2013-10-23
Authors
Genevsky, Alexander
Vastfjall, Daniel
Slovic, Paul
Knutson, Brian
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Society for Neuroscience
Abstract
The “identifiable victim effect” refers to peoples’ tendency to preferentially give to identified versus anonymous victims of misfortune,
and has been proposed to partly depend on affect. By soliciting charitable donations from human subjects during behavioral and neural
(i.e., functional magnetic resonance imaging) experiments, we sought to determine whether and how affect might promote the identifiable
victim effect. Behaviorally, subjects gave more to orphans depicted by photographs versus silhouettes, and their shift in preferences
was mediated by photograph-induced feelings of positive arousal, but not negative arousal. Neurally, while photographs versus silhouettes
elicited activity in widespread circuits associated with facial and affective processing, only nucleus accumbens activity predicted and
could statistically account for increased donations. Together, these findings suggest that presenting evaluable identifiable information
can recruit positive arousal, which then promotes giving.Wepropose that affect elicited by identifiable stimuli can compel people to give
more to strangers, even despite costs to the self.
Description
9 pages
Keywords
Positive arousal, Negative arousal, Photograph-induced feelings, Nucleus accumbens activity, Anterior insula activity, Neural activity
Citation
Genevsky, A., Västfjäll, D., Slovic, P., & Knutson, B. (2013). Neural underpinnings of the identifiable victim effect: Affect shifts preferences for giving. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33, 17188–17196.