Revisiting Singularity and Compassion Fade: Replication and extensions of Experiments 1a and 3 in Västfjäll et al. (2014)
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Västfjäll et al. (2014) found support for “compassion fade”, that affective reactions and charitable donations decrease as the number of victims increases. In a pre-registered experiment with a U.S. sample recruited through CloudResearch Connect (N = 1207), we conducted a replication and extension of Studies 1a and 3 from Västfjäll et al. (2014). In the replication of Study 1a, we found no support for the impact of the number of victims (one vs. two children) on hypothetical donation amount, positive- or negative affect, perceived impact of donations (all |d|s ≤ 0.16) or for any mediation effects. In the replication of Study 3, we found no support for the impact of the number of victims or relatedness on donation amount, perceived need, positive affect, or negative affect of donations (all ηp2 ≤ 0.012). Bayesian analyses indicated moderate to strong evidence in favor of the null hypothesis for most effects, and equivalence testing indicated that seven of eight effects were smaller than our conservative smallest effect size of interest. Overall, our findings fail to replicate the original compassion fade effects and suggest limitations on their generalizability across various dependent measures and contexts. Materials, data, and code are available on: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/A2TGB
Source: PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints)
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204019937