Widespread Problems Like PSAP Staffing Might Attract Less Problem-Solving Attention

“One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” This quote, attributed to Josef Stalin, highlights how the increasing scale of a problem often corresponds with a decreasing concern for that problem. Maybe it’s because people can more easily wrap their minds around a smaller problem.

PSAP staffing and 911 Dispatchers’ average career length across the country are significant Public Safety problems. When trying to increase visibility for these problems, it may be more effective to keep to the scale and specifics of your community, your county, or your state only. Because, if people think something is commonly occurring or widespread, they tend to think it is normal and less of a problem.

A recent article, The Bigger the Problem the Littler: When the Scope of a Problems Makes It Seem Less Dangerous (Eskreis-Winkler, et al, ?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, online publication October 2024), found “Organizations that routinely point to the prevalence of the problem they are trying to solve may be oblivious to a critical downside of their advertising. In the current investigation, participants who saw real world ads that mentioned the prevalence of a given problem believed the problem caused less harm. Thus, public communications designed to get us thinking and acting for Public Safety or any other cause at large may achieve this objective at the group level while simultaneously – and unintentionally – demotivating us in the world in which most of us act and live: the real world of individuals.”

The authors call this phenomenon “The Big Problem Paradox.” PSAP understaffing and typically short 911 Dispatcher careers are big problems. But presenting them on a large scale might not be the way to elicit understanding, interest and problem-solving. Maybe this somewhat surprising response is hovering around the intersection of the Bystander Effect and “It Will Never Happen Here” (the Local Safety Bias). In any event, this makes the job of getting your message out about PSAP understaffing even more reliant on personal contact with the community. When working to increase your job’s visibility, the person-to-person scale is simply easier to grasp.

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