Look Who it Was Random video

Session II: Explaining the Identified Victim Bias

973 views · Published 1 May 2012 · 1:31:26 · Indexed 26 October 2026

Channel: Harvard University · 2012 · Education

Watch on YouTube

7th Annual Program in Ethics and Health Conference: Identified vs. Statistical Lives - Ethics and Public Policy

Session Chair: Stephen Resch, Ph.D.
Deputy Director, Center for Health Decision Science, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health

Deborah Small, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Marketing and Psychology, University of Pennsylvania

Jennifer Lerner, Ph.D.
Professor of Public Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and Director, Harvard Laboratory for Decision Science

Amitabh Chandra, Ph.D.
Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Peter Railton, Ph.D.
John Stephenson Perrin Professor of Philosophy and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, University of Michigan

This conference focuses on how decision makers and the public tend to feel more strongly obligated to assist "identified" people at risk than to assist "statistical" ones, and the implications for public policy. To illustrate, when a group of Chilean miners were stranded following a 2010 mine accident, the rescue mission garnered worldwide support and millions of dollars, but the public had not felt a similar need to invest in mine safety measures that would have saved more statistical lives. What factors trigger or explain this difference in attitude and behavior? How is it manifested when we think about global health problems, such as treatment and prevention (and "treatment as prevention") for HIV/AIDS? Does the law express such bias? Is there any ethical justification for this bias, for example, as a matter of obligation toward each and every individual? Is it, alternatively, a moral error, rooted in well-known cognitive biases?

More from this channel