Example Of The Bystander Effect

While walking down a city street, alarming cries for help ring out through the air, and it is observed that an individual that appears to be living well has a helpless, poor victim held down, relentlessly beating them to the ground and taking what little they have left for their own advantage and benefit. What would be the right thing to do; run away or try to help, either by stepping in or calling the proper authorities? The morally ethical thing to do would be to help and do what has to be done to stand up for what is right. This same general scenario is happening not too far from this country, where organ brokers are victimizing innocent and poverty-stricken mothers and fathers trying to find a way to provide and get

The study by Darley and Latane leaves society with the knowledge that everyone who is witnessing an emergency is most likely thinking the same thing “someone else will call for help or has already” so “Always act as if you are the only person there” (Darely & Latane, 1968). The concept of situationism is the driving force behind bystander effect. Situationism is “social behavior is, to a larger extent than people commonly realize, a response to people’s social context, not a function of individual personality” (Fiske, 2010, p. 7). Individuals first have to decide if they are witnessing an emergency. Then they need to decide if they have a responsibility to act which is when situationism comes in. If there are hundreds of witnesses each individual see the situation from a different perspective and responsibility to act is diffused among the crowd. On the other hand if one individual sees an emergency and believes there is no one else to help the responsibility rests on him or her. The context of the situation will determine how an individual will react, but people should consider the reality of everyone believing someone else will react and no one reacting. Kitty Genovese would still be alive if even one person would have called the cops when the first attack started.

Bystanderism or the Bystander Effect can be defined as the phenomenon that an individual is less likely to help in an emergency situation when passive bystanders are present (Darley and Latané, 1968). Latane and Darley (1970) published a book entitled, Theory of the Unresponsive Bystander. According to the theory, the presence of other people or just the perception that other people are witnessing the event will decrease the likelihood that an individual will intervene in an emergency due to psychological processes like: (1) diffusion of responsibility, wherein the responsibility is diffused when more bystanders are present and this reduces the psychological costs of not intervening, (2) pluralistic ignorance or informational social influence, which means that if the situation is ambiguous people will look to other people around to see what they do, and (3) evaluation apprehension, wherein individual bystanders are aware that other people are present and may be afraid of being evaluated negatively if they react.

This video showed multiple people help others via a dashcam. It just showed that there

The bystander effect is defined as the higher the number of people who notice an emergency, the less of a chance that those bystanders will help the victim (as cited in Aronson, Wilson, Akert, & Sommers, 2015). The importance of the bystander effect is unparalleled because it determines whether humans will still help in a situation when there are other people available. Bystanders can deal with situations ranging from the mundane to the dire, but what matters is the number of those who take action.

It states that when the amount of bystanders increases, the likelihood of one of the bystanders assisting drastically decreases. Many feel that if they have no obligation to help they should not, almost as if it's none of their business. To victims, a bystander who doesn’t take action is as equally evil as the perpetrator. The easiness of laughing along with others, or acting as if you saw nothing is correlated to the fact that it is easier than ever to be influenced in today’s society. Too often, ignoring the humiliation of another is seen. It may be the easy way out, however, it is certainly not the morally correct way

Many people would probably say that if they saw an injured person, they would stop to help them. When put in the situation, however, would they actually stop? The United States of America does not require that pedestrians, who are not involved, help the ones who are. This is no excuse not to help, though. Even helping in just a small way could save a life.

Kitty Genovese was a woman from New York City who was stabbed to death three separate times outside her apartment building in Kew Gardens. The first two times being outside her apartment, and finally finishing her off the assailant returned stabbing her on the floor at the foot of the stairs. Much controversy arose from the Kitty Genovese murder, due to how public the murder was, and how no one stood up for her, or even alerted the police. After Kitty Genovese’s murder, questions began to arise, why didn't anyone take action, how was the assailant able to stab her three times in public, and why weren't the police or ambulances called sooner? All these questions could be answered by a syndrome, titled after the Kitty Genovese murder, as the “Bystander Effect”.

On March 13, 1964, a woman by the name of Kitty Genovese was walking towards her apartment-complex in New York City, when suddenly she was fatally stabbed on different occasions by a man named Winston Moseley. As she screamed and begged for people to help, her neighbors just stood and idly watched the incident. The neighbors were well aware of her situation due to her screams and some even watched the incident happen. There were 38 witnesses to the event, and no phone calls were made, until after her death. Why do you think no one helped? Why did her neighbors watch? What could have changed the outcome?

Nonetheless, the bystander effect does not apply to everybody without exception. There are still some people who will sincerely try their best to help others, like Hugo Tale-Yax who actually was trying a help a woman under assault when the attacker killed him (Litch 651). I believe as long as one person try their best to help, so will others. In the end, try our best to help is better than do nothing but only the help from other

People didn't want to respond due to their own reasoning, weather it was because they didn't want to be apart of it or if they truely thought the women was okay. With this effect people will go with the group becuase it is easier than to take action. Such as when "Kitty" was killed no one helped because they didn't see anyone else doing it. So this effect deffenatly relates to this case.

What would you do, if a mother was crying for your help? Some people would say, “I would help,” but may act differently in a crisis. Such as one of the tragedies brought by Hurricane Sandy. During the hurricane, a mother named Glenda Moore tried to escape the storm with her two boys before it was too late. During their desperate attempt to escape the storm, their car was trapped and they were seperated. Ms. Moore desperately beg neighbors to come to her need but were ignored, pushed aside, and not acknowledged. As a result, the two boys- Brandon, 2, and Connor 4, were later found cold, stiff, and lifeless. Could their effort have saved the boys? We will never know, but there could have been a chance that their life would not have ended so tragically and unexpectedly.

The events leading to the 38 people who didn’t report a murder was horrifying. 38 cold-blooded bystanders didn’t intervene or report the stabbings watched as Catherine Genovese was stabbed 3 times and found dead. A community like this should be more involved in taking action when observing violent or life threatening combats between other people. Martin Gansberg’s, the author, purpose of writing this essay is to persuade readers in order to make changes in our society’s mindset on public safety. His proposed readers were towards anyone in general, especially to those who may witness violent quarrels between other people. This story spooked me because citizens in a community are supposed to back each other up in times of need. Because this is a true story this makes me have doubt of the people in my community, if anything happened to me. I strongly believe in times like this, a community must take some sort of action when they see a bystander in a deadly

Of course, most people who hear this situation will immediately want to help Martha, taking the moral high-ground. However, psychologically, most of these people would actually not intervene at all, and these are not bad people, mind you, they simply either lack confidence to commit, or they just would rather not risk losing anything they don’t have to. This is not an issue of what would actually be done

The Bystander Effect is a controversial theory given to social phenomenon where the more potential bystanders there are, the less likely any individual is to help in emergency situations. A traditional explanation for the cause of the Bystander Effect is that responsibility diffuses across the multiple bystanders, diluting the responsibility of each. (Kyle et al.) The Bystander effect, also known as the Genovese Syndrome, was named after the infamous murder of “Kitty” Catherine Genovese in 1964, on the streets of New York in front of thirty-seven witnesses. After studying the Genovese syndrome and doing research on how this phenomenon occurs even today, it is clear The Bystander Effect is not just a theory, but actually fact.