>>11It's called the hindsight phenomenon, or hindsight bias.
Here's a non-Wikipedia link (not that it matters)
http://psychology.about.com/od/hindex/g/hindsight-bias.htm
>>25That's because it is very easy to personalize those people. Allow me to copy and paste something from my psychology book.
(Sorry about the wall of text, but it's relevant and I chuckle each time I read it.)
Innocent victims trigger more compassion if personalized.
In a week when a soon-forgotten earthquake in Iran
kills 3,000 people, one small boy dies, trapped in a well
shaft in Italy, and the whole world grieves. Concerned
that the projected death statistics of a nuclear war are
impersonal to the point of being incomprehensible,
international law professor Roger Fisher proposed a way
to personalize the victims:
It so happens that a young man, usually a navy
officer, accompanies the president wherever he
goes. This young man has a black attachè case
which contains the codes that are needed to fire
nuclear weapons.
I can see the president at a staff meeting
considering nuclear war as an abstract question.
He might conclude, “On SIOP Plan One, the
decision is affi rmative. Communicate the Alpha
line XYZ.” Such jargon keeps what is involved at
a distance.
My suggestion, then, is quite simple. Put that
needed code number in a little capsule and
implant that capsule right next to the heart of a
volunteer. The volunteer will carry with him a big,
heavy butcher knife as he accompanies the president.
If ever the president wants to fi re nuclear
weapons, the only way he can do so is by first,
with his own hands, killing one human being.
“George,” the president would say, “I’m sorry,
but tens of millions must die.” The president then
would have to look at someone and realize what
death is—what an innocent death is. Blood on the
White House carpet: it’s reality brought home.
When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon,
they said, “My God, that’s terrible. Having to kill someone
would distort the president’s judgment. He might
never push the button.”
Source: Adapted from “Preventing Nuclear War” by Roger
Fisher, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 1981, pp. 11–17.
