emphasize the traumatic, unforeseen character of nature’s forces. Conversely, social approaches to disaster focus on the social system itself, and how ongoing structural and societal norms, buildings and organizations directly or indirectly create disasters and related vulnerabilities. The latter often dismiss “classic” physical descriptions of disaster as ignoring the genuine systemic inequalities or vulnerabilities that calamity exposes rather than causes.
At first glance, a more socially constructed approach seems more likely to foster empathy and prosocial decision-making. As mentioned earlier, the intensity of experienced emotion, perceptions of the situation and victim, and characteristics of the empathizer all substantially determine