Page 47 - Hard Goals

38 HARD Goals

The second group’s letter gave a portrait of an identifi able
victim. The individual victim pitch went like this (again, this is
just an excerpt):

Any money that you donate will go to Rokia, a seven-year-old
girl from Mali, Africa. Rokia is desperately poor, and faces
a threat of severe hunger or even starvation. Her life will be
changed for the better as a result of your financial gift . . .

The third group got a letter that gave them both; they got
pieces of the statistical victim pitch followed by the identifi able
victim pitch.
Out of the possible $5, people who read the statistical victim
pitch gave an average of $1.14. People who got the combined
pitch (statistical and identifi able victim) gave $1.43. And people
who read just the identifi able victim pitch? They gave $2.38.
Yes, you read that right. People who only read about Rokia,
who could personalize the person they were helping, gave more
than twice as much money as those who were only giving to
help a statistic.
A follow-up experiment was conducted with the same statis-
tical and identifi able victim scenarios. However, this time par-
ticipants were “primed” to think in a particular way. One group
was primed for thinking “analytically” by asking them ques-

tions like, “If an object travels at five feet per minute, then, by
your calculations, how many feet will it travel in 360 seconds?”
The other group was primed for “feeling” with questions like
“When you hear the word baby, what do you feel?”
Here’s the kicker: When people were primed to “feel” before
reading about Rokia, they gave $2.34, about the same as they