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Bystander Effect Research Paper

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While couples are waiting anxiously for Valentine’s Day to spend it with the ones they love, Nikolas Cruz was waiting on that day for something else.

On February 14 2018, Broward Police Department received a call notifying a school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida. 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz went into the high school with an AR-15 killing 17 people and injuring others. Although others were familiar with the things that he posted no one stepped up to say anything. Nikolas had been giving numerous hints of his fascination with guns, yet none of the police officers bothered to pay attention to the reports they got about him. Cruz was a former student that got expelled for disciplinary reasons (Florida School). Many believe that the hatred from being expelled the was his last motivation to go to the school and express his rage.

Why didn’t anybody stop him? It is common that the witnesses that knew what would happen were consisted of the Genovese …show more content…

This may happen for the reason known as “diffusion of responsibility”. Psychologists have proven that people are less likely to intercede in a situation if there are more people present. For example, John Darley and Bibb Latane have done many experiments proving the bystander effect. One experiment is called “The Smoke-Filled Room Experiment” where they take in random person and put a smoke machine in another room. Darley and Latane put more people in the same room that the targeted person is in and turn on the smoke machine. They observe if the targeted person will react if nobody else does. Almost every time the targeted person would look around to see if anybody was doing anything, notice that the others didn’t react, and stay seated knowing that their life could be in danger. Furthermore, people always depend on someone else to make the first decision before following after them. This evidence is proof of the psychological phenomenon of Bystander

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