Researcher says carnage too easy to ignore.

Byline: Jeff Wright The Register-Guard

If Paul Slovic's research assumptions are correct, there's a good chance you'll stop reading this story as soon as you learn what it's about: genocide in Darfur.

In the African country of Sudan, gangs of assassins called Janjaweed have systematically murdered hundreds of thousands of people, with close to another 2 million interned in refugee camps, threatened with death from famine and disease.

But as the numbers grow, Americans may be less rather than more inclined to help, according to Slovic, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and president of Decision Research, a nonprofit institute that studies human decision-making and perceptions of risk.

It's not that Americans lack compassion - witness the outpouring of support for victims of Hurricane Katrina earlier this fall, and for survivors of last year's devastating tsunami in Asia.

But in what Slovic labels a "fundamental deficiency in our humanity," people are much less likely to come to the aid of victims of mass murder.

In a paper he delivered earlier this month to an international academic society in Toronto, Slovic offers one reason why: The emotional side of people's brains grows numb in the face of mass killing, preventing them from feeling empathy and taking action.

"If people are not going to act at 100,000 murders, they're not going to act at 300,000 murders," he said. "The only reason to know how many have died is to have a number to report when we memorialize another genocide 10 years after the fact."

Despite what his own research suggests, Slovic isn't giving up; on the contrary, he has helped organize and will speak at a community forum Wednesday on what local residents can do to try to stop the genocide in Darfur.

"It's not that we have to send troops over there, but we should at least think about the range of things we could do, like economic sanctions or political pressure," he said. "We're not even doing that. We're completely turning away from it."

Sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council, Wednesday's forum at Temple Beth Israel hopes to draw a broad interfaith response, council president Margot Helphand said. "From our point of view, we can't do nothing, especially given our sensibilities to things like this," she said, referring to Jews' intimate knowledge of genocide from World War II.

Slovic recalled how Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel traveled the world, including to Eugene in 1996, in hopes of educating people about what happened in Nazi Germany so that it might never happen again.

"His mantra was, `Never again' - that was his whole purpose," Slovic said. "But now we find it's `Again and again,' and in every case, the response is virtually nil."

Research suggests that if a single identifiable person is killed or threatened, people are aghast, Slovic said. But the greater the number in peril, the harder it is for people to connect.

"The difference between no lives lost and one life lost is huge," he said. "But your reaction would be identical if you heard that 87 or 88 people died in an accident. If you're the 88th person, your life is less valuable than if you were the first."

Humans also tend to draw a distinction between natural and man-made disasters. For one thing, hurricanes and tsunamis tend to have a beginning, middle and end - as opposed to the interminable duration of political mayhem.

Also, even if they never experience one, people can imagine a hurricane or tsunami happening to them. But mass murder? Genocide "is such an extreme level of violence, it's hard to wrap our minds around," Slovic said. "It doesn't seem real - and the fact that it doesn't get much news coverage makes it less real."

In just one example of media aversion, Slovic points to a study that shows ABC devoted 18 minutes last year in its nightly newscasts to the genocide in Darfur, NBC five minutes and CBS three minutes.

During the same 12 months, the three networks combined to devote 130 minutes to fashion maven Martha Stewart.

But the crux of the matter may be how humans mesh the analytical, rational side of their brain with the more intuitive, feelings-based side, Slovic said.

"When we think logically and morally, we know it's wrong for a government to brutalize its people like the government of Sudan is brutalizing the people of Darfur," he said. "But when we let the more experiential side dominate, we numb out with the numbers."

The key, he said, is to explore what kind of institutions to create so that people will act responsibly in the face of genocide.

Strategies, he said, could range from bringing people from Darfur to the local area to tell their stories, to pressuring media and politicians to take the issue of mass murder seriously.

The alternative?

"We're going to see another century of mass murders because we failed to take action, or even consider taking action."

GENOCIDE IN DARFUR

Forum looks at how local residents can help stop the carnage

When/where: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Temple Beth Israel, 2550 Portland St.

Sponsor/information: Jewish Community Relations Council; 686-0567

A CENTURY OF GENOCIDE

1915-18: Armenia, 1.5 million deaths

1932-33: Ukraine famine (Stalin), 7 million deaths

1937-38: Nanking Massacre, 300,000 deaths

1938-45: Nazi Germany/Holocaust, 6 million deaths

1975-79: Cambodia (Pol Pot), 2 million deaths

1992-95: Bosnia, 200,000 deaths

1994: Rwanda, 800,000 deaths

- United Human Rights Council