Research shows that people are more likely to make a charitable gift to a single needy individual than to an entire impoverished region. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions. Sometimes the hard part is finding the right emotion to harness. For instance, it’s difficult to get teenagers to quit smoking by instilling in them a fear of the consequences, but it’s easier to get them to quit by tapping into their resentment of the duplicity of Big Tobacco.

Humanizing the statistics gives the argument greater wallop.

When it comes to statistics, our best advice is to use them as input, not output. Use them to make up your mind on an issue. Don’t make up your mind and then go looking for the numbers to support yourself—that’s asking for temptation and trouble.

These results are shocking. The mere act of calculation reduced people’s charity. Once we put on our analytical hat, we react to emotional appeals differently. We hinder our ability to feel.

Rather than taking the default approach, or thinking about what one should do, the researchers asked them to think about what they could do instead.

This simple shift made a big difference. People who thought about what they could do came up with much better solutions. They were higher quality and three times as creative. Rather than getting bogged down in which of two imperfect options was best, asking people to think

about what they could do encouraged them to bring a different mindset to the problem.