The Diffusion Of Responsibility Theory

Psychologists state diffusion of responsibility is one of the main blames for the bystander effect being

‘A Television Drama’, written by Jane Rule, is the story of a woman who lives on the street where a crime takes place. The police, swarmed just outside the woman’s house, were asking witnesses questions and looking for the suspect of a burglary that had occurred a few blocks away. The protagonist, Carolee, is frightened by this and decides to stay inside her home. While inside the house, she walks around aimlessly, glancing outside the windows when she spots an injured man in her garden. She hesitates to call the police and simply observes the man, ultimately deciding against calling 911. Some believe that this was not a morally correct thing to do; however, Carolee was correct in deciding not to phone the police because she thought she might have been imagining the man in her garden, the police were already on the scene

The bystander effect also arises from a diffusion of responsibility as each bystander can better rationalize his or her lack of action. In some cases, people assume that in a large group, there will be someone else that is more qualified to help and therefore, each person feels less obligated to act. For example, a doctor is far more qualified to provide medical assistance to a victim and likewise, a police officer or stronger-bodied man can better subdue a perpetrator. If the crowd of bystanders is large,

In the Chapter “In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing,” from the book Opening Skinner’s Box, by Lauren Slater. Slater describes a crime scene in which the witnesses didn’t do anything to help a woman that was being stabbed, she also tells us about a few experiments that were conducted in regards to how people would react when help is needed in certain situations, will they report the situation to anyone or just go about their business like nothing is going on. Calling for help or assisting someone in a time of need isn’t always something that people do as an immediate reaction, especially when there’s a crowd of people present.

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.

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 bystander effect, is a “social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present”(Weiten). Such reactions usually occur when individuals do not want to risk getting involved in the situation. In Chronicles of a Death Foretold, even though the townspeople do not desire the murder of Santiago Nasar,their unwillingness or lack of courage to take action in preventing this “foretold murder” consequently allows for the murder to happen. The idea of disturbing the status-quo and risk of involvement overshadows the Sucré citizens’ moral values. Even though a scale of individual willingness to avert the crime is presented such as Colonel Lazaro Aponte’s fulfilling his duty ,Clotilde Armenta’s multiple attempts and Father Armando’s total indifference; none of the townspeople want to be directly implicated in the matter.

Abraham Lincoln said, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today”. My responsibility to America is to take it. Being a teen in today’s culture I believe many teens think they cannot have an impact and that they don’t need to take responsibility. Of course I can mess around till November 14, 2019, the day I turn eighteen, and suddenly become a mature adult. Not exactly! I can have an impact on my neighborhood, city, the whole state, or even all of America. Defy the cliche that media conditions us to believe.

It is a challenge to reconcile human beliefs in compassion and morality with the actions, or inactions, of bystanders in the Holocaust. How is it possible that hundreds of thousands of people stood by while millions faced pain and suffering? Before exonerating or condemning all of them, it is necessary to consider the differences in bystanders. For the context of the Holocaust, a bystander is someone who was neither a target of the Nazis or a Nazi themselves. Putting all of these people in the same group is an oversimplification, because it ignores the power system in place during the Holocaust and the various positions of bystanders in that system. The wealthy business owner is not the same as the working-class mother of four. In this situation, one has considerable power and ability, and the other does not. Applying a blanket statement, and calling the latter unjust when they are ordinary people in a time of horrific war is contrary to reason. It is also necessary to consider the extent of bystander’s actions. Have their actions merely helped to ensure their own survival, or do they directly hurt Holocaust victims? The magnitude of each situation is varied. In conclusion, to gauge the morality of a bystander’s actions, they need to be judged on an individual basis, with two qualities in mind: that person’s ability to act and the effect of their actions.

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.

The first aspect of the bystander effect is the shared responsibility, but according to research by K. Thomas et. al (2016) a more important

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

Psychological Research Into the Behaviour of Bystanders The first researchers to investigate systematically the circumstances in which bystanders are and are not likely to intervene to help others were Latane & Darley. The tragic case of Kitty Genovese in 1960s New York acted as a catalyst for research studies since the case highlighted concepts such as bystander apathy and the unresponsive bystander. Latane and Darley have shown through research that we are less likely to define a situation as being dangerous if other people are present, a phenomenon they called pluralistic ignorance. Latane and Darley performed a study, the 'smoke-filled room experiment', which demonstrates the power of

The Bystander Effect is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when people are less likely to offer assistance in emergency situations if bystanders, or other individuals, are also present. The murder of a woman, Kitty Genovese, was the catalyst for the discovery of such an effect. Approximately 40 individuals observed or overheard Genovese’s murder, yet no one reported it to authorities or attempted to intervene in any way. This phenomenon was studied and demonstrated by John M. Darley and Bibb Latene, both social psychologists. Darley and Latene showed this effect in several experiments known together as the “Bystander Apathy Experiments.”

The by stander effect is a term that came to fruition when Kitty Genovese was brutally raped and murdered in front of her apartment, and 38 individuals witnessed the entire tragedy and turned a blind eye. Researchers were interested in this phenomenon and set out to research the bystander effect further. The bystander effect occurs when an individual’s likeliness of helping decreases when in the presence of others in an emergency situation (Fischer, Krueger, Greitmeyer, Vogrincic, Kastenmuller, & Frey, 2011). The purpose of this study is to measure the level of helpfulness among college age students with emphasis on the bystander effect. The model that this study follows is the Bystander Intervention Model by Latane and Darley. A series of five steps must be followed while intervening in the case of an emergency, the stages are again as follows: (1) noticing the event, (2) interpreting the event as an emergency, (3) making the choice to intervene, (4) knowing how to provide help, and (5) applying the behavior (Jenkins & Nickerson, 2016). As a group, we set out to analyze the bystander effect among college age students, while focusing on how gender impacts the given scenario.