Compassion fade (psychic numbing)

Biological Parallel

Parental birds provision individual chicks based on begging intensity, but as brood size increases, parents become less responsive to any single chick's signals—attention and resources dilute across offspring. This scaling limitation evolved because finite parental capacity can't match linear increases in demand; emotional calibration to individual need becomes maladaptive in large broods. Compassion fade is the cognitive ceiling of empathy: neural systems evolved to track individuals up to Dunbar-like limits, beyond which statistical abstraction replaces emotional engagement.