Entitativity and value of the community in risk research

Abstract

The article raises the question of the impact of structural and dynamic characteristics of the community, its “entitativity”, on the willingness to help this community, i.e. on the value attributed to it. Specific hypotheses are formulated in the framework of “psychophysical numbing” research. Experiments showed that presenting “entitative” descriptions of the community produces an ambiguous effect: it can both increase the value of the community as well as decrease. The presence of the description — the “vividness effect” — does not affect the results. The experimental studies enabled the author to make methodological conclusions that may contribute to further progress in this field of research.