People pay more attention to the number of people killed in a natural disaster than to the number of survivors when deciding how much money to donate to disaster relief efforts, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The donation bias can be reversed, however, with a simple change in terminology.

?While fatalities have a severe impact on the afflicted community or country, disaster aid should be allocated to people affected by the disaster ? those who are injured, homeless, or hungry,? says lead researcher Ioannis Evangelidis of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) in the Netherlands. ?Our research shows that donors tend not to consider who really receives the aid.?