Presentation: Compassion Collapse

Why is there the tendency to feel more compassion for single identifiable victims, rather than large groups of victims?

Assistant Professor of Psychology Daryl Cameron will present his research on how motivated compassion regulation can explain "the collapse of compassion": the tendency to feel more compassion for single identifiable victims than large groups of victims. In addition, Cameron will discuss how motivated compassion regulation can explain dehumanization: the denial of mental states to others.

The event is sponsored by SAU's Psi Chi International Honor Society in Psychology.


Cameron earned his doctorate in social psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was appointed as a post-doctoral Fellow at the Duke University Kenan Institute for Ethics, and is currently serving as an assistant professor at the University of Iowa, and as a visiting assistant professor at the Stanford University Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE). His research focuses on causes and consequences of compassion, including the motivations (i.e., fear of compassion) and mechanisms (i.e., emotion regulation) that explain lapses of compassion in response to large-scale disasters and stigmatized victims. This research also examines the consequences of compassion regulation for moral identity and moral behavior. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation.

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