Revisiting the impact of singularity on the Identified Victim Effect: Replication and extension of Kogut and Ritov (2005a) Study 2

Abstract

The identified victim effect is the phenomenon in which people tend to contribute more to identified than to unidentified victims. Kogut and Ritov (Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 18(3), 157–167, 2005) found that the identified victim effect was limited to a single victim and driven by empathic emotions. In a pre-registered experiment with an online U.S. American MTurk sample on CloudResearch (N = 2003), we conducted a close replication and extension of Experiment 2 from Kogut and Ritov (Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 18(3), 157–167, 2005). The replication findings failed to provide empirical support for the identified single victim effect hypothesis since we found no evidence of differences in willingness to contribute when comparing a single identified victim to a single unidentified victim (η 2 p = .00, 90% CI [0.00, 0.00]), and no indication for the target article’s interaction between singularity and identifiability (original: η 2 p = .062, 90% CI [0.01, 0.15]; replication: η 2 p = .00, 90% CI [0.00, 0.00]). Extending the replication to conduct a conceptual replication of Kogut and Ritov (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 104(2), 150–157, 2007), we investigated a boundary condition of the effect—group belonging. We found support for an ingroup bias in helping behaviors and indications for empathic emotions and perceived responsibility contributing to this effect. We discuss differences between our study and the target article and implications for the literature on the identified victim effect.

Keywords

• identifiable victim effect
• identified victim effect
• empathic emotions
• helping behavior
• bias
• judgment and decision-making