Results tagged “nicholaschristof”

       

There was a movie that played at Hot Docs called Reporter. It was about Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times columnist who globetrots to the sites of the world's worst humanitarian disasters in an effort to provide original reporting that will draw attention to crises of which very few people are aware. Most interestingly, Kristof stays up to date on all the latest psychology literature on the subject of compassion; he is obsessed with crafting stories that will move his readers to action. Anyone can write something that will prompt people to respond "oh, that's a shame" before moving on; it takes a special talent to rouse a readership to demand change or intervention or support. What has been concluded from various experiments is that humans' innate capacity for sympathy is extremely limited: we are more likely to be affected by the suffering of an individual than that of a group. Kristof therefore tends to focus on very particular tales of one person's exceptional affliction.