| Summary: | We are regularly
told about people at various locations around the globe, both near and far, who
are in distress or in dire need. In the present research, we examined how the
prospective donor’s psychological distance from a given victim may interact
with the victim’s identification to determine the donor’s willingness to accede
to requests for donations to help the victim in question. In three studies, we
measured willingness to donate (Studies 1 and 2) and actual donations (Study 3)
to identified or unidentified victims, while measuring (Study 1) or
manipulating (Studies 2 and 3) the psychological distance between prospective
donors and the recipients. Results indicate that increasing the psychological
distance between prospective donors and victims decreases willingness to help —
but only when the victims are unidentified, not when they are identified. This
suggests that victim’s identification mitigates the effect of distance on
donor’s willingness to help.
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