The Bystander Revolution : How Social Media Shapes And Effect On Bystander Effect

The Bystander Effect was first demonstrated by psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley in 1968, four years after the brutal murder (encompassing thirty or more witnesses) of Kitty Genovese. It is a social phenomenon in which observers believe that someone else in a group will intervene and offer help to a victim in need (1). According to these psychologists, there are two important factors attributed to this phenomenon, social influence and a perceived diffusion of responsibility. Social

1. After the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, John Darley and Bibb Latane were in shock as the rest of the city/world that a 28 year old lady could be stabbed in a neighborhood with about 38 by standers or more and say or do nothing. Why didn’t anyone try and help her? How could people stand by and watch this go on? People speculated that the failure of people to get involved might be due more to the influence (socially) that bystanders have on each other. To test this theory, Darley and Latane, two psychologists, decided to conduct a study. “Diffusion of Responsibility” Everyone hopes that someone else will be the first to step up

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.

This essay will ‘compare and contrast’ two approaches made in investigating the ‘bystander effect’. It will discuss in some depth as to what exactly is meant by the bystander effect, illustrating when this concept was first shown and why. An outline will be made of the different methods used, those being experiments and discourse analysis, explaining each one in turn, within the framework of two cases. The first being the murder of ‘Catherine Genovese,’ 1964.and the second ‘James Bulger’ 1993. The essay will then show examples of the differences and similarities between each method. Concluding with a summary of findings into the two approaches to investigating the Bystander Effect.

The psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané (1968) were interested in the Genovese incident and sought to find the answer to this psychological phenomenon. In their experiment, Darley and Latané hypothesized that the higher number of bystanders would decrease helping behavior and vice versa. The two manipulated the number of confederates during each trial and recorded the time it took for the participants to report the simulated seizure. Their results confirmed that if were more confederates, each participant would feel less pressured to help, leading to the discovery of the bystander effect.

In the experiment they tested the responsiveness of individuals and how they reacted under stress when first, alone, and then second within a crowd. Each time the people that were under pressure and alone reacted in a higher rate than those in the crowds. Researchers have justified people’s non responsiveness within a crowd, with diffusion of responsibility, in which people are less likely to take action within a crowd, because they feel someone else will take responsibility. On March 14 1964, Kitty Genovese was the ultimate test subject for the Bystander Syndrome, having been stabbed twice in public and left to die on her apartment stairs, but the question that remains unanswered, under matters of a life, is the silence of the crowd truly due to diffusion of responsibility? Or lack of interest and

For example, in the Kitty Genovese case, referenced by both reading sources, there were multiple witness who saw the murder, but did not help. This is because of what the textbook refers to as the bystander effect. There are two main rationales that were discussed concerning the bystander effect.

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

Psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley stated that “as the number of bystanders increase, any given bystander is less likely to notice the incident, interpret it as an emergency, and assume responsibility for taking action .” Some things that influence the bystander effect are that the more vague the situation the less likely people will intervene. Also the need to accepted in social ways, like when the other bystanders do not react, people often take this as a sign that they don't need to respond

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.

Why the witnesses demonstrated a lack of reaction towards the victim's need for help? In 1968, two Social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley came up with a concept called “The Bystander Effect”, which supposed “the presence of diffusion of responsibility” and “social influence”.

Latane and Darley (1968) did the study because they became interested in the topic following the murder of Kitty Genovese who was killed due to people not taking any form of action. They wanted to test if and how the bystander effect would work. The bystander effect is when the presence of others discourages an individual from mediating in crisis circumstances. Due to emergencies being uncommon, when they occur, people are unsure of how to deal with them. They have to be dealt with under conditions of uncertainty, stress, and fear.

Fact 3 is that it helps people alert the Police or the Medical people if they are in a fatal situation. ”Social media has been a place where teens, who might be feeling isolated, can cry for help. For example, when an 18-year-old recently posted on his Facebook page that he was thinking of jumping off the George Washington Bridge, which connects New York with New Jersey, Port Authority officers managed to connect with him on social media and encouraged him to get help” (Wallace 3). Without social media, this kid would have committed

Sometimes people can get national news on social media faster than the news, which is good and bad. 14 young black girls went missing in the nation capital Washington D.C in one day. This story didn’t even make it to the world news people found out about the girls on social media. A New York Time’s writer name Morgan Jerkins wrote an article about these girls. Her story applies to my 3 principles such as altruism, scapegoating, and bystander effect.

Darley and Latané were looking for what would happen if there is no authority present during a crisis. In these two five-stage experiments, Darley and Latané investigated witness behavior. In the late, busy streets of New York, a young woman was brutally raped and murdered. The crime lasted a painful thirty-five minutes. During that time span, thirty-eight people saw the crime being committed. The majority of the witnesses turned off their lights as if no tragic event occurred. By the end of the night, one person called the police. The behavior of the bystanders evoked the attention of the psychologists to discover why humans react the way they do in a cry for help. The two experiments