The identifiable victim effect is the tendency to offer more help when a specific, identifiable person is in hardship than when a large, vaguely defined group faces the same need. It has two parts: people prefer to help one identified victim over an unidentified one, and a single identified victim over a group of identified victims. Economist Thomas Schelling wrote that harm to a particular person stirs anxiety, guilt and sentiment, while statistical death barely does. Researchers have also found the mirror image, the identifiable perpetrator effect, in which people punish a named wrongdoer more harshly. Scholars count the effect as a bias because helping N unidentified victims should produce N times as much aid.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.