> There are examples where judgments are unresponsive to numbers — where people will spend the same, say, to prevent a public health hazard that kills a hundred lives or a thousand lives. (I couldn’t find a reference for this, but I think it is somewhere in Thinking, Fast and Slow.)
The canonical name is "scope insensitivity." The original experiment was about saving wildlife (bird) lives not humans, but it went as you said, and replication results do appear to track for harms of whatever kind. "Economic Preferences or Attitude Expressions?: An Analysis of Dollar Responses to Public Issues", https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007835629236
Linked by Rob Henderson. I sent it on to a few and bookmarked it.
> There are examples where judgments are unresponsive to numbers — where people will spend the same, say, to prevent a public health hazard that kills a hundred lives or a thousand lives. (I couldn’t find a reference for this, but I think it is somewhere in Thinking, Fast and Slow.)
The canonical name is "scope insensitivity." The original experiment was about saving wildlife (bird) lives not humans, but it went as you said, and replication results do appear to track for harms of whatever kind. "Economic Preferences or Attitude Expressions?: An Analysis of Dollar Responses to Public Issues", https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007835629236