The hope, for many, is that highlighting the prevalence of an issue will help them gather support or funding for their cause.
But the survey by Kellogg Assistant Professor of Administration and Organizations Lauren Eskreis-Winkler It shows that this approach often has the opposite effect. In fact, when people show how widespread the problems are, they tend to believe that these problems are less dangerous than they initially thought they were.
In a series of studies, Eskreis-Winkler and her colleagues-including former researcher Kellogg Luiza Tanoue Troncoso Peres and Ayelet Fishbach From the University of Chicago-it used numerous examples of this phenomenon, which reject the “paradox of the Great View”. It shapes how people see almost everything, from the dangers of driving drunk on personal medical dangers.
“We live in a world where we constantly find information on scale problems,” says Eskreis-Winkler. “My colleagues and I were curious: this distorts our thinking about the problems themselves? We thought it could, and we found it.”
The disadvantage of optimism
For decades, research has shown that while people take care of and altruistic to individuals, often we I am struggling to associate with the suffering of big groups. Detecting the scale of a problem, it seems, distorts our empathy. Eskreis-Winkler and her colleagues wondered if the scale not only affects our ability to feel but changes the way we believe.
“We can read that” such and similar millions of people die in traffic accidents every year “, but how do the numbers like this really register for us?” He says. “This is what we set to explore in this project.”
Ironically, it is another force of humanity that the researchers they proposed could cause this paradoxical paradox: optimism. People generally believe that the world is safe And that we are in a position Eliminate what is wrong.
But this optimism could also lead us to assume that if a problem was serious, humanity would have already solved it.
The researchers examined this case in a series of studies that investigated a wide range of problems in real world scenarios.
“We wanted to explore the paradox of major problems in relation to the problems that people face in their daily lives,” says Eskreis-Winkler.
In one of these studies, more than 300 Chicago residents read about one of the three local problems: a restaurant that failed a health inspection, a building that had violated a security code and a young child who had not been vaccinated by measles, mumps or reds. They rated the possibility that the problem would cause damage to a scale of 1 to 100. Then they learned the real prevalence of the problem (eg “the researchers found that more than 10,000 buildings in Chicago have been reported for violating the building”) and once again evaluated the possibility of the problem.
In any case, participants believed that the problem was less likely to cause harm after learning about the problem.
Estimating harm
The research team has confirmed this paradoxical highlight in various other situations.
For example, in a study similar to the first, they investigated how many 120 employees at a pharmaceutical company examined the problem of a person who did not take medication as planned. Employees estimate the possibility that this behavior will cause the patient hospitalized. They then saw real world ads that show that 75 % of patients do not receive their medication as prescribed and then assessed the possibility of patients being hospitalized.
Again, when participants saw how widespread the problem of non -adhesion of drugs was, they concluded that it was less likely to cause harm than they initially believed. The paradoxical paradox in this case has proved to even affect the opinion of the experts.
This finding also applies to several additional studies, including studies focused on common problems such as driving drunk and studies where participants were paid to guess the risk of proper damage.
Difficult problems
The research team also investigated problems that were known to be difficult to address people, such as environmental issues, and found further evidence of the paradoxical promotion.
In such a study, 200 participants read about a suburban family who has learned that several chemicals – including polyamide, polyester and polymer vinyl – had been washed in their drinking water. Some participants were informed that these chemicals are common in tap water, while others did not receive this information. All participants then ranked the possibility of the following statements: First, that the family would not get sick of water and, secondly, that the government had tasted the water and ensured that it was safe.
Those who learned about the real dominance of chemicals were more likely to believe that the family would not get sick and that the government had safely encountered the problem. In fact, participants were more optimistic about the situation after learning about the prevalence of these chemicals.
So, if this paradoxical problem occurs because people feel optimistic about a situation, then it is reasonable that it has to collapse when people feel less optimistic.
Contrary to this logic, however, the researchers found that the paradox is even applied to situations where people did not expect good things to happen.
In a study, for example, more than 100 participants read either a family living in a rich neighborhood or family in a poor neighborhood. All the participants learned about the same infections in the water of the fountain and were asked how ill they thought the family would get from these chemicals. Participants in both groups – regardless of whether they were optimistic about the family’s condition – destroyed that contaminated water was less harmful after learning that chemicals were usually found in the tap water.
It is worth, however, that the paradoxical problem was less intense for the team read about the poor neighborhood-it was found that the result may not be so powerful when people are less optimistic.
Shaping the way people help
These findings prompted Eskreis-Winkler and his colleagues to explore how this paradox can affect people’s motives to help others.
To this end, the team ran many studies by asking participants to imagine a friend who had a medical condition, to assess how danger their friend’s life was and to evaluate how much motivation he would feel to get their friend emergency medical care.
In a study on chest pain, for example, people believed that their friend’s chest pain was less likely to cause severe damage after learning that thoracic pain was common (“over 9 million adults in the United States had chest pain”). This information also made people feel less motivated to help their friend.
In addition, learning about the prevalence of other medical conditions has made people less willing to support the funding of these conditions.
The research team, in another study, showed two online profiles to participants – one created for a girl who needed ulcer surgery and the other for a girl who needed a gastrointestinal surgery (GI). The team allows participants to know that he had only the money to support one of the two surgeries.
Participants who learned about the prevalence of these conditions – surgery (joint) and GI surgery (rarely) – not only believed that the most common problem was less serious, but also preferred the girl to help with the rare situation.
“These are the most important studies in the document,” says Eskreis-Winkler. “The impact is that learning about prevailing a problem can spill people’s motivation to act in the real world.”
Still, Eskreis-Winkler points out that the wrong perceptions such as the paradox of the Great View are neither inherently good nor bad. Whether they cause positive or negative effects really depends on the situation.
Maybe “if one has an irrational fear of a disease and they learn the prevailing of the disease, it could help them to fear less and live a fuller life,” he says. “The paradox of great promotion could have useful benefits.”
