Informing Decisions to Prevent Genocide

This paper describes a psychological phenomenon called psychic numbing that devalues lives when many are at stake and thus enables political leaders to neglect mass suffering, in violation of our professed humanitarian values. The authors argue for the need to use tools such as decision analysis to overcome this moral insensitivity and provide a more thoughtful and consistent framework within which to assess the difficult trade-offs posed by decisions involving mass atrocities.