We find it increasingly hard to empathise with the plight of larger numbers of people. So, a story about a family who needs help is much easier for us to relate to than, say, a story about 1000s of people displaced or dying. As the number increases the situation gets more abstract and we just can’t connect with it.

See the work of Paul Slovic, or this super article by Brian Resnick: A psychologist explains the limits of human compassion

Other uses of psychic numbing are for the general withdrawal of people and societies from potentially major catastrophes that seem unlikely to happen. Individually, it may also be reduced engagement with a past traumatic experience.

Psychic numbing

The name given to the observation that people who watch more TV seem to believe the world is a more dangerous place than people who watch less. Probably due to the prevalence of violence on TV and coverage of extreme events that are actually quite rare in most people’s lives. The term comes from cultivation theory — broadly the study of the long-term effects of television — which has a more general idea that people who watch a lot of TV tend to see reality more like the reality they see on TV.

Mean world syndrome

These large bottles are seriously impressive to see. They also have neat names from biblical kings for reasons I don’t know. There are a few more gradations, and some sizes and names are only for sparkling wines like champagne and some not. And there are some that even get significantly larger than the 20 bottles in a nebuchadnezzar, though I’ve never seen one.

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Party bottle sizes