The Bystander Effect On Social Psychology

The bystander effect is a social psychological scenario where a person who is in an urgent situation is not given any help by the people around due to the discourage from the presence of others (whatispsychology.biz, 2017). Social psychologists, John Darley and Bibb Latane, introduced the bystander effect in the 1960s after the murder of Kitty Genovese, a young woman who was stabbed to death outside her home in New York City. It took her attacker more than half an hour to kill her, and during that time, thirty-eight people saw her being murdered, and they did nothing to help her. “The responsibility for helping was diffused among the observers” (Darley & Latane, 1968).

Jennifer S. Lerner, author of Emotion and Decision Making, talks about how our emotions can actively affect our actions. In Lerner’s book, it states, “We start with emotions arising from the judgement or a choice at hand, a type of emotion that strongly and routinely shapes decision making.” Our emotions cause us to make certain decisions in our everyday lives. For example a person who is feeling nervous and anxious about a specific outcome of a risky situation may choose a more safe route. A person who admires an organization may donate money. In both cases, our the way we feel about something or someone determines how we address a situation and how we treat someone or something. In some way our emotions act as our conscience in each situation we go through that requires us to choose an outcome .

This assignment will look at incidents and emergencies that can happen in a health and social care setting. Within my assignment I will be explaining possible priorities and responses when dealing with two incidents or emergencies in a health and social care setting. I will be discussing

Empathy is the ability to understand and experience the feelings of others, particularly others’ suffering. Humanity’s gift of understanding complex emotions ushers in a new way of understanding ourselves and how we react to stimuli. This ultimately leads to questioning of everything, leading us to one strong notion: Does empathy guide or hinder moral action?

Walking along the busy street of Manhattan, Katie becomes light headed passing out; although she is in a large group of people, no one stops to help. This phenomenon is called the “bystander effect.” A bystander is often anyone who passed by, witnessed, or even participated in a certain situation (Polanin, Espelage & Pigott, 2012). The bystander effect is the idea that the larger the group, the less likely an individual is to be helped. The likelihood of someone getting helped is inversely compared to the number of people who are around witnessing the event at the time. This phenomenon has played a huge role in the increase of civilians failing to be helped in the past years, and is starting to have more light shined upon it. Knowledge of

different times) act as if they were is a lot of pain or a drunk. The test was to see how long it took

Attempts to define “emotion” have proved to be rather difficult. Instead of searching for a comprehensive definition, Gross (2011) describes the three core features of emotions. First, emotions occur when an individual decides that a situation is relevant to his or her goals. Second, emotions are multi-faceted, and involve both subjective and physiological experiences, as well as behaviors. The third feature involves the authoritative nature of emotions. They have the powerful ability to interrupt ongoing processes, assert their priority over other activities, and force their way into awareness. For example, some traditions describe emotions as “disorganized interruptions of mental activity” (Salovey & Mayer, 1989). Emotions are such an

In the article “Introduction to Bystander Apathy”, during the same experiment with the seizure, they found that “the subjects who did not report the seizure seemed more emotionally taxed than those who did report the seizure.” (3) This shows that when the subjects did act on their beliefs they became emotionally taxed from their own indecision. They felt that they had to make the correct decision because of what they thought others wanted them to do. In the article “The Science of Paying It Forward” in the same study of the bystander effect, researchers also found that when there is already help being given to a situation, “you become a bystander who feels that help is no longer needed.” (4)

Suggests that someone who needs help will have an increased amount of empathic emotion which leads to long-term helpful behaviours.

You always hear of stories in the news where someones quick thinking saved another persons life. Yet unlike these brave citizens, most of us would be scared and would let our emotions take over in a dangerous situation. Everyone has those few experiences where they let their emotions get the better of them and it affects what decisions they make. In certain examples, it is not that big of a deal.

This assignment will look at incidents and emergencies that can happen in a health and social care setting. Within my assignment I will be explaining possible priorities and responses when dealing with two incidents or emergencies in a health and social care setting. I will be discussing health, safety or security concerns that may arise from the incident or emergency. Then I will be discussing how I would respond to them.

Our emotions in many cases affect our perception of events as well as the actions that we take ourselves by permeating our way of thinking, and therefore affecting each thing that we do in that moment. In particular, emotions about the perception of ourselves have been shown to have both the ability to positively and negatively affect our actions and performances in life. This is what can be

Situations matter because it dictates how one will react based on the given moment. For

The bystander effect is both a social and psychological phenomenon in which an individual’s inclination towards showing helping behaviours are minimised by the influence of other people. Research has found that the more people acting as bystanders in a situation, the less likely it is that helping behaviours will be demonstrated. However in the correct conditions, where conditioned cues increase self-awareness, it is possible to reverse the bystander effect phenomenon. The bystander effect is prevalent in everyday life, and often decorates the news, shocking the world, especially when authority figures such as police men and women succumb to the effect. Diffusion of responsibility, ignorance of others interpretation of an event and self-consciousness are all social processes which appear to lead to social inhibition of helping behaviours and one of the main theories of the bystander effect is provided Latané and Darley (1970) whose cognitive model provides a series of decisions that can lead to social inhibition. The bystander effect is influenced by the conditions an individual is in when an event occurs, for example the bystander effect appears to be most dominant when an individual is in a group of strangers with low group cohesiveness. FINISH

No man can be certain beyond a shadow of a doubt how he will react in any given situation. One can know how he would hope to react; however, until the circumstances are in place behavior can not be entirely predicted. A person’s reaction in the direst of moments is in fact the heart of who they are. While reactions are spontaneous, actions are not and the decisions to act or not to act