Studies have demonstrated that to win people over to a cause, such as alleviating world hunger, it is far better to appeal to the heart rather than the head: people tend to respond more charitably to “identifiable victims” than they do to statistics. “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” (It does get more complicated than that, however; please see this article.) Knowing how people are generally going to respond has been beneficial to animal advocacy. When we advocate for veganism, for example, and we’re emphasizing the large numbers of animals — all the billions of nameless victims — suffering in our food system, we may be deterring others from joining the cause. When discussing animal welfare issues or promoting veganism, focusing on individual, identifiable victims rather than statistical data seems to generate more success. (Again, this is complicated — I…
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Are there chicken sheds in heaven? 