What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Well, no, not really. In fact, repeated traumatization makes it harder, not easier, to cope with renewed adversity. Despite this, people often wrongly apply the 'practice makes perfect' mantra to coping with adversity. We call this the habituation fallacy: when it comes to human suffering, the idea that people get habituated to pain is usually wrong, yet many people believe in it.
Although moderate trauma might indeed be linked to more resilience compared to no adversity, the evidence is clear: repeated, severe trauma reduces one's ability to cope. The second loss of a child can be worse than the first, the third violent attack can be more traumatizing than the second, and so on.
In humanitarian emergencies, the habituation fallacy leads potential donors to believe that those with a history of prior suffering have acquired better coping mechanisms and that they, therefore, suffer less from new trauma. This reduces willingness to help victims of repeated misfortune. When potential donors assume that there is not much human agony and suffering to relieve, they see little need to act.
We demonstrated the harmful effects of the habituation fallacy in six studies using a mix of methods to chart responses to a range of fictitious and real-life disasters. For example, in one study participants were asked to indicate how much they thought victims of different disasters were suffering, while we varied what we told participants about the previous victimizations the fictional characters had endured. Consistently, a sizeable majority of participants reported thinking that first-time victims would suffer more than victims who already had a history of surviving previous disasters. In another study, we saw that this belief also reduced willingness to donate money to help them.
Widespread belief in the habituation fallacy can help explain why emergencies in regions that have previously been relatively prosperous and stable such as Ukraine trigger greater altruism than those with a long history of conflict such as Afghanistan: first-time victims are assumed to suffer more, and they are therefore helped more.
Donors' decisions are of course affected by many things, for example, compassion fatigue or ingroup bias. Alternative explanations in our studies were ruled out by controlling for these factors, giving confidence that effects were indeed attributable to the habituation fallacy. Our studies showed how the habituation fallacy affects decisions to help people of different races and nationalities. The habituation fallacy was important for explaining donors' decisions about helping members of other ethnic groups.
Knowing about the habituation fallacy might enable donors to be more conscious of their biases and resist them. After all, unless we are conscious of the forces that affect our behavioral choices, it is harder to make different choices. In the context of humanitarian disaster relief, awareness of the habituation fallacy could help reduce donor discrimination against victims who are assumed not to suffer much, but who in fact suffer greatly.
For Further Reading
Zagefka, H. (2022). The habituation fallacy: Disaster victims who are repeatedly victimized are assumed to suffer less, and they are helped less. European Journal of Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2843
Hanna Zagefka is Professor of Social Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on intergroup processes, especially intergroup helping.
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