The Observation Of The Bystander Effect

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).

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.

The name of this article is called, “Cognitive, Social and Psychological Determinants of Emotional State.” In 1962, Schachter and Singer put their two-factor theory of emotion to the test. Schachter and Singer believed that physical arousal played a huge role in emotions. They came up with one of the earliest cognitive theories of emotion. In the experiment, they provide three main hypotheses, which were derived from the aim of the study. The first one asks, if a person experiences a state of arousal for which they have no immediate

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.

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.

“Why People Don’t Help in a Crisis” co-written by John M. Darley and Bibb Latané states that there are three primary reasons to a bystander’s unresponsive behavior. In the event of an emergency a person must first take notice of the situation. Then interpret if the scene is truly an emergency and ultimately determine if one has a personal responsibility to help. Darley and Bibb conclude that someone’s reactions are manipulated by how other people around respond to the situation.

John M. Darley and Bibb Latané conducted a social experiment that they titled the "Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility" experiment. The purpose of this study was to see how quickly bystanders would respond to an emergency to provide aid. Also studied was how different factors like the number of other bystanders would influence how quickly people responded to the emergency. Darley and Latané's hypothesis was that the more bystanders to an emergency, the less likely, or the more slowly, any one bystander will intervene to provide aid (Darley & Latané, p. 377).

“Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder But Didn’t Call the Police” is unfortunately a true story about citizens who witnessed their neighbor being assaulted and didn’t take action. The neighbor’s negligence perturbed me, and I had to look into it. The Samuel Merritt University refers to it as “The Bystander Effect” and explains it as “a diffusion of responsibility . . . the more people there are to witness an event, the less each individual feels personally responsible for doing something” (Samuel Merritt University, “Bystander Intervention & Prevention”). This article about Kitty Genovese and her selfish neighbors reminded me of a dispute I once saw between a small group and an individual. It wasn’t the fight that startled me, but the group of apprehensive

This means that if the subjects think that they are the only one who knows about the incident, there is a higher probability that they will ask for help. On the contrary, the bigger groups displayed fewer reactions to the incident. The significantly higher percentage of subjects who asked for help in the first treatment condition entails that people react more if there is less number of people around an emergency or an event. On the other hand, the significantly lower percentage of subjects who helped in the other treatment conditions entails that individuals are less likely to help in an emergency when other people are present. Two reasons were offered to explain the bystander apathy effect.

In your own words, provide background information (two sentences) that sets up the purpose of the study. This information will likely be found in the Introduction.

As suggested by Fischer et al.(2011) bystander effect usually no exist when the situation is obviously interpreted as emergency and dangerous. This can be explaining clearly that the observers understand the situation encounter by actor and they need to respond quickly to the situation and this will increase high level of emotional and physiological arousal of observers when acknowledging the situational conditions and take the responsibilities to help actor by showing the empathy.

Every day, people encounter situations in which automatic thinking assists in decision making. How does automatic thinking cause humans to operate in different situations? In situations that are ambiguous, studies show that the bystander effect is shown to be more probable if these people were in a more controlled situation. The bystander effect shows that in situations in which there are more people present, the likelihood that someone will take action is far less than if one was alone. This is partially due to the belief that responsibility is split when there are more people present during a particular event. One is less likely to act because they expect that someone else will act first. Because everyone that is present in a particular event shares the same knowledge about the situation, they share the thought that someone else will act first, causing the shared responsibility to bounce from person to person as everyone waits for someone else to take action.

The stated focus, intent, purpose, and research questions are clearly defined by the author. The reader is able to clearly understand these aspects of the research. Additionally, the author clearly identifies the problem and research questions, and the rationale for the research being conducted. Likewise, the methodology section clearly presents the manner in which the research was conducted and why the specific method was chosen. As a result, a fellow researcher

In our everyday life, we are presented with plenty of circumstances demanding our response. Sometimes, we are the ones taking action and other times we become the judges of other people’s actions. A natural reaction after an event concluded is to think back with alternatives in order to imagine different outcomes. This usually happens because we dislike the results and now, without pressure, we can think of better options.

Emotions are considered one of the most important sources of information as well as facilitate the processing of information among adults. Many psychologies researchers have agreed on most roles of emotions in their interpretations guided by intelligence in a social conversation. Furthermore, they agree that emotions influence the thought system of an individual and that of other people as well as guide their actions. In addition to that, social anxiety is a basic element of human behavior since it involves the failures and successes related to emotional intelligence. The use of emotions cannot be avoided especially in