Similarly, visiting disaster sites is thought to affect empathy, but the nature of the effect it has depends on the particulars of the visit. Unorganized visits, for example, can often raise empathy by forcing the visitors to see suffering up close and prompting them to consider how to interact with victims. On the other hand, more organized visits have been accused of lowering empathy because they comprised tourists “acting like tourists and dressing like tourists,” which dilutes and sanitizes the experience.
