So, we are kicking off our Scientists in Synagogues
programming with Dr. Paul Slovic giving the
D’var Torah today about how the insights
from moral psychology relate to the experience
of Hagar and Ishmael at the well, from our
Torah reading.
And, if you would like more information about
the future upcoming Scientists in Synagogues
programming, we're going to be having a seminar
that continues to explore these topics beginning
in November.
There is a flyer available out in the social
hall somewhere, you can ask Nina where it
is.
Or me, she’ll tell me and then you could
ask me.
So for now, thank you to Dr. Paul Slovic.
I hope you all enjoy his talk.
Shana tovah.
The story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar in today's
Torah reading has many interesting twists
and turns from which to contemplate the topic.
That's the theme of this Scientists in Synagogues
seminar series that Rabbi Ruhi just told you
about.
The topic of that series is “Compassion
and Obligation in Psychology and Judaism.”
Today, I'm going to briefly discuss one particular
aspect of the Torah reading that connects
to psychological research that my colleagues
and I have done, trying to understand what
motivates people to help others in need, and
why we help in some cases and not in others.
Recall the point in the reading where Hagar
and her son Ishmael are cast out into the
wilderness with little to sustain them but
a bit of bread and a cask of water.
These meager provisions were quickly consumed,
and the pair wandered in the desert without
sustenance, growing weaker.
Hagar left Ishmael in a bush, and, unable
to watch him die, moved away from him.
She raised her voice and wept.
We can feel her sense of hopelessness and
despair.
But then God intervened to “open her eyes,”
and she noticed nearby a well, most likely
a spring, and she quickly filled the empty
sack of water with water and saved her son.
It's interesting that God didn't simply just
revive Ishmael directly through divine power,
but rather, enabled Hagar to recognize an
effective solution and action that she could
take to rescue him.
But it's not always so easy to appreciate
how effective our actions will be when we
try to help others.
I will return to this point about effectiveness
in a minute.
Let's flash forward to today’s world, where
there are so many people in need.
It's easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless
because of the enormity of problems such as
homelessness and food insufficiency in our
own community, or the tens of millions of
refugees forced by violence, and increasingly
by climate change, to flee their homes and
wander their wilderness.
Despite our sincere concerns and desire to
help, hopelessness paralyzes many of us.
Our attention strays and we turn to address
more manageable issues in our daily lives.
What might a psychological scientist in a
synagogue say about this?
I’ll give it a try.
In 1994, I carefully followed the reports
of the genocide occurring in Rwanda, where
some 800,000 people were murdered in about
100 days.
I was shocked by the indifference of the American
public to this terrible news, and angered
by the refusal of the world's governments
to intervene and stop the bloodshed.
After the Rwandan genocide, my colleagues
and I decided to study why we are so often
indifferent to genocide and other mass atrocities
and fail to intervene to prevent them from
occurring.
By coincidence with the story of Hagar and
Ishmael, our first study involved water and
wells.
Those who survived the genocide in Rwanda
fled to the safety of refugee camps on the
border of what was then Chad.
In one camp, many became sick with cholera
because they lacked clean water, and they
began to die from that disease.
There was a desperate need for equipment to
drill wells that could provide safe drinking
water to the refugees.
So we saw this event in the news, and we designed
a study based on it.
So in our study, we asked participants like
yourselves to play the role of a government
official in a neighboring country who had
enough money to drill new wells sufficient
to provide clean water to 4,500 Rwandan refugees
in the camp, thus keeping them healthy and
alive.
But you, as a government official, could instead
use the money for building schools or roads
or medical facilities in your own country.
What would you do?
Would you send the money to drill new wells?
That was our question we asked.
So we split our study participants into two
groups.
One group was told that their camp had 250,000
refugees.
The second group was told that the camp had
11,000 refugees.
The new wells would protect 4,500 refugees
in either camp.
What we found was that participants in our
studies, acting as government officials, were
far more likely to decide to provide equipment
to help 4,500 people in the small camp.
This confirmed our hypothesis that the perceived
effectiveness of this lifesaving action would
be determined more by the percentage of people
helped, obviously greater in the small camp,
than by the actual number of people helped,
which was the same in both camps.
We then did another study, this time asking
people to make a real donation to a charity
in order to help a starving child, who was
identified with her name, photo and the country
where she lived.
We convened a second group of people, participants,
and gave them the same opportunity to donate
to this child.
In order to increase the donations, we gave
additional information to those in the second
group, calling attention to the fact that
the problem was very important  – millions
of people were starving in the region where
the child lived.
Our manipulation failed.
In fact, donations dropped almost in half
when donors were told that the child was one
of millions in need.
In reflecting on these two studies, we came
to appreciate the role that our feelings of
effectiveness play in motivating us to help
those in need.
We help others not only because they need
our help, but because we feel good when we
help.
We get kind of a warm glow of satisfaction
when we do something good for others, for
someone.
But we don't feel our efforts are effective,
and we don't expect to get that warm glow,
when we help only a small percentage of those
in need, as in the large refugee camp, or
when we help only one child out of millions.
A mere drop in the bucket, we may think.
So then we don't help, even though we could.
Let me give you one more example of this.
In another study, we found that all it took
to stop some people from donating to a child
they could actually help was to learn that
there was one other child they were not helping.
Not millions, not thousands, as in the first
the first two studies I described, just one
child not helped created bad feelings and
a sense of inadequacy that dampened the warm
glow.
It didn't feel as good to help the child they
could help, so they didn't help that child.
This is wrong!
Just because we can't help everyone doesn't
mean we should help no one.
We gave a name to this deception of our feelings:
we called it “pseudoinefficacy”, a false
sense of inefficacy, false because we really
could do something that was meaningful and
worthwhile.
Perhaps you're wondering “why should we
trust our feelings to motivate us when they
behave so irrationally?”
This is a great question.
Well, we trust our feelings to guide our behavior
because most of the time, relying on our feelings
actually works well to guide us efficiently
through our daily tasks, and helps us make
good decisions.
But reliance on feelings doesn't always work
well, as we've seen in the studies I describe.
The lesson here is to focus your thoughts
on what you can accomplish and its importance,
rather than dwell on what you can't do, because
that may make you feel badly and stop you
from doing something worthwhile.
My colleagues and I have created a website
called The Arithmetic of Compassion – please
check it out – to create awareness of the
strange ways our minds sometimes deceive us
into thinking our efforts to help others are
not worthwhile, when indeed they are truly
meaningful and important.
On the website, we feature the starfish story
that many of you likely know, originally told
by Loren Eisley, a famous American anthropologist,
philosopher and science writer.
Here's what he wrote:
“While wandering a deserted beach at dawn.
. . I saw a man in the distance bending and
throwing as he walked the endless stretch
toward me.
As he came near, I could see that he was throwing
starfish, abandoned on the sand by the tide,
back into the sea.
When he was close enough I asked him why he
was working so hard at this strange task.
He said that the sun would dry the starfish
and they would die.
I said to him that I thought he was foolish.
There were thousands of starfish on miles
and miles of beach.
One man alone could never make a difference.
He smiled as he picked up the next starfish.
Hurling it far into the sea he said, ‘It
makes a difference for this one.’
I abandoned my writing and spent the morning
throwing starfish.”
Returning to today’s reading, it is significant
that God didn't simply revive Ishmael directly
through some divine power, but rather opened
Hagar’s eyes to an effective action she
could take to save her son.
As we begin this new year, there are millions
like Hagar and Ishmael wandering their personal
wildernesses in search of survival and needing
aid.
We learn from the Torah not to expect divine
intervention to rescue them.
We need to act ourselves, as did Hagar.
We need to open our eyes so as not to be dragged
to the depths of despair that felled Hagar.
And I take this eye-opening to mean becoming
alert to the possible ways that we may be
able to help others in need by taking direct
action ourselves, or by working with and offering
financial support to some of the many fine
organizations that are dedicated to addressing
humanitarian crises in our community, or around
the world, and are doing heroic work.
But some of the actions that become apparent
to us may not be a simple, as fully effective,
as going to the nearby well was for Hagar.
In that case, science can open our eyes, too,
by alerting us to the ways that our minds
can fool us into thinking that our actions
won't matter, when in fact they do.
What we learn from science is that we should
not be discouraged from doing whatever we
can, even when we cannot fill the entire need.
As in the starfish story, even partial solutions
can save whole lives.
Thank you so much, Dr. Paul Slovic.
