Though the particular innocent litigant may be "concrete," the statistical victims of inadequate trials are equally real and likely to be far more numerous.
Authors of a 1997 study posed various theories in an effort to explain the "Identifiable Victim Effect," a phenomenon in which a person predictably feels more empathy and a greater willingness to act to rectify the circumstances of victims who are known to the person than for unidentified or statistical victims. (102) These theories included vividness of identifiable victims, the proportion-of-the-reference group effect, the ex post-ex ante distinction, and the distinction between certainty and uncertainty.