Can International Law Stop Genocide When Our Moral Intuitions Fail Us?

In Chapter 5, psychologist Paul Slovic and legal scholar David Zionts discuss psychological constraints that impede individuals' ability to respond to the plight of large numbers of people. As a result, individuals price lives differently depending on the numbers involved—specifically, they succumb to a numbing effect whereby they register a greater emotional and financial response to the loss of a few than to the loss of many.