Personification

A single identifiable human face moves us far more powerfully than statistics about thousands of people. We feel for individuals; we are unmoved by numbers.

• A single photograph of a drowning child on a beach changed European refugee policy more than years of statistics about hundreds of thousands of deaths.
• Charity fundraising is dramatically more effective when it tells the story of one named individual than when it presents aggregate statistics about millions.
• Stalin's attributed quote: 'One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic' — a cynical but psychologically accurate observation.