The Bystander Effect Essays

Throughout life, one is to see many people they don’t know Humans walk past each other and no interaction occurs. Depending on a particular situation one might be in, it can change the ability to react, help and care for a stranger in need. In the article “We are all bystanders”, by Jason Marsh and Dacher Keltner, it shows how in certain settings people don’t act to help another, even though one might want to. “Everyday Stuart would board the bus and a couple of boys would tease him. I would sit silent and watch. I wish I would’ve helped” (Marsh/Keltner 3). People develop a feeling that prevents them from caring for strangers. This is due to a thought of peer pressure or judgement that could be given to an individual for taking action.

When there is an emergency, why is taking out our phones to take a picture or video the very first thing we want to do? Why do we casually walk by a person who is in trouble, and go about our business as if we did not anyone? Why do we not help or act when someone is getting, but instead we just stand in a crowd and watch? Why do we bury our moral instincts during emergencies? “We witness a problem, consider positive action, and respond by doing nothing. Why do we not help in these situations and put our moral instincts in shackles” (Keltner & Marsh, 2017). We as people are bystanders to the world around us daily, but the question is why? The answer to all the “why” questions is the bystander effect.

People have a tendency, known as social proof, to believe that others' interpretation of the ambiguous situation is more accurate than their own. Hence, a lack of response by others leads them to conclude that the situation is not an emergency and that response is not warranted. Finally, empirical evidence has shown that the bystander effect is negated when the situation is clearly recognized as an emergency. In a 1976 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Lance Shotland and Margaret Straw illustrated that when people witnessed a fight between a man and a woman that they believed to be strangers to each other, they intervened 65 percent of the time. Thus, people often do not respond appropriately to an emergency situation because the situation is unclear to them and as a result, they have misinterpreted it as a non-emergency based on their own past experience or social cues taken from others.

Social psychology first examined the phenomena later termed “bystander effect” in response to a 1964 murder. The murder of a young woman with as many as 38 witnesses and none who helped until it was too late. The bystander effect is individuals seeing an emergency situation but not helping. There are many reasons why individuals do not respond: diffusion of responsibility, not noticing or unsure if it is an emergency, and not wanting to be liable if the person still dies are a few.

The Bystander effect is a controversial theory given to social phenomenon where the more potential helpers there are, the less likely any individual is to help. A traditional explanation for this 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 created 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 today, it is clear The Bystander effect is not theory, but actually fact.

Picture this. Someone is on their daily 3.5km run and as they pass the bus stop a woman grabs her chest and collapses. There are crowds of people passing by her but no one’s stopping to help. They probably aren't going to stop and help, because no one is stopping they are going to think if those many people aren’t stopping to help then she is fine, they might also be thinking someone else will help her. Now picture this that same person is out just for a walk around the park and they hear someone cry out for help, no one’s around but them so they probably would go over and help them. These situations are representing the bystander effect. John Darley and Bibb Latane came up with the bystander effect, the bystander effect states that the more people that are present the less likely anyone is to help someone in need. The bystander effect can be connected to the characters in William Golding's Lord of the flies. People just stand by in emergency situations when other people are around, and them no helping the victim can have some serious consequences.

First ‘The Bystander Effect’, states ‘that individuals are less likely to intervene in emergency situations when other people are present’. Latne & Darley, (1970) cited in Byford J.( 2014 pp 232). Simply put, where emergency situations arise, if more than one person is present the likelihood of someone in distress being helped reduces. This is the ‘diffusion of responsibility’ effect were each bystander feels less obliged to help because the responsibility seems to be divided with others present’. (Byford J., 2014 pp233) An example of Bystander Apathy shown within a video (The Open University 2016).

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

In the 2007 article “the bystander effect” the author Dorothy Barkin’s was talking about the reasons why most people decide not to get involved in complex situations. Many think that the reasons maybe very obvious such as the fear of possible danger to one’s self or having to go through long legal proceedings. However, the author talks about two main reasons for such actions. The first being ambiguity, the fact the most people do not know how to evaluate different situations and there lays most for the decision making. As knowing what the problem that you are facing in that moment, that alone creates a high-pressure environment that most people would not like to be involved in. Not to mention, being able to help effectively

In the book "Bystander", written by James Preller, it talks about not just the bully and victims but the other roles, such as Bystanders and allies. In chapter 20, a gathered group of boys discuss their responses to Griffin's unreasonable and illogical behavior. Their reasons for doing nothing include "The unreliability of authority figures to respond", "The threat of retaliation", "The victim, at least on some level, deserves it" , "It is human nature, the law of the jungle, and it will always persist", "It's better to stay out of it", "No one should rat out another student". These are ridiculous and absurd reason to be a bystander to such a unspeakable act. The main idea I would like to another reader to consider is advise others to not

Well it does and it’s called Bystander Nonintervention. Bystander Nonintervention means just the way it sounds; it’s when people, bystanders, watch instead of intervene in a situation. This article relates very well to chapter 13 in our psychology. I would say this article is the number #1 example used to show bystander nonintervention, I mean it’s used in the book. So what causes bystander intervention? It’s not so much that people don’t care, which psychologist used to think was the case, coining the term bystander apathy. But the bystander effect was more along the lines of “psychological paralysis” according to John Darley and Bibb Latane. People want to help in an emergency but find themselves frozen perhaps because of shock. With bystander nonintervention there is more danger in numbers than safety, totally opposite from what you usually hear. The more people around the less likely people will help. There are to major factors the contribute to bystander nonintervention according to Darley and Latane; pluralistic ignorance which prevent us from interpreting if a situation is an emergency, if no one is around helping is must not be an emergency, and diffusion of responsibility which discourages us from offering assistance in an emergency, if you don’t help it’s not your

Darley and Latane begin their essay by using solid examples of when the bystander effect presented itself, and why people were harmed because of it. They explain why nice people do not help in certain situations, and why someone can pass by a person in distress when others are around, and why more people respond when no one is around. Darley and Latane show what it takes for people to respond; they have to actually realize that it is an emergency and not a ruse or a normal occurrence. Sitting idly by while a dangerous situation is happening does not make someone a bad person, it just reveals their humanity.

Today a lot of individuals are praised for their bravery and their heroism. A lot of

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

According to Aronson, Wilson, and Akert (2013) prosocial behavior is defined as an act performed for the benefit of another person. Altruism is referred to as the want to help another individual even if it means no benefits, or possibly a cost, for the helper (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2013). One particular factor, the bystander effect, has a profound impact on whether or not people help others. The bystander effect states that as the number of people who witness an emergency increases, the likelihood that any of those people will help decreases (Aronson et al., 2013). Processes associated with the bystander effect such as pluralistic ignorance, diffusion of responsibility, and victim effect all impact the likelihood of prosocial