What Is A Bystander Effect?

Why should students help pick up fellow classmate's books that he or she dropped? Why should people give to the homeless? Why should humans become organ donors? Altruism is defined as a person's ability to go out of their way to enhance the welfare of someone else without anything in return. But it's not the "what" of altruism that is intriguing, it's the "why" that is truly fascinating. Scientist and researches may never pinpoint what makes humans exhibit altruistic behavior, but there is one thing that scientist and researches are sure about. Altruism plays an important role in running society, and the world can use more of it.

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.

“What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.” -Elie Wiesel

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.

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

The bystander effect is defined as the higher the number of people who notice an emergency, the less of a chance that those bystanders will help the victim (as cited in Aronson, Wilson, Akert, & Sommers, 2015). The importance of the bystander effect is unparalleled because it determines whether humans will still help in a situation when there are other people available. Bystanders can deal with situations ranging from the mundane to the dire, but what matters is the number of those who take action.

The Bystander Program focuses on a wider audience and is aimed at changing community norms regarding sexual assault. Meaning instead of primarily focusing on woman as being the primary victims of sexual assaults and men as the perpetrators, bystander programs approach both as bystanders of sexual assault (Banyard, Moynihan, & Plante, 2007; Baynard et al., 2004; Hines & Palm Reed, 2011). These types of programs have been known to change the attitudes towards sexual assaults, the willingness to help, empathy for victims and

However, the biggest thing to do with these type of situations is not to be a bystander, but rather to take action. People who stand up and speak out are the citizens who are helping to decrease the number of sexual assault cases in our nation and acting as role models to help the victims cope.

On March 13, 1964, a woman by the name of Kitty Genovese was walking towards her apartment-complex in New York City, when suddenly she was fatally stabbed on different occasions by a man named Winston Moseley. As she screamed and begged for people to help, her neighbors just stood and idly watched the incident. The neighbors were well aware of her situation due to her screams and some even watched the incident happen. There were 38 witnesses to the event, and no phone calls were made, until after her death. Why do you think no one helped? Why did her neighbors watch? What could have changed the outcome?

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.

The bystander effect occurs when the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in an emergency situation 1. Diffusion of responsibility. When other people think that someone else will intervene and as a result, they feel less responsible. 2. The more distant a person feels to an ongoing issue, the less concerned they seem to be.

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

“Chronicle of a Death Foretold” by Gabriel García Márquez was written and published in Colombia 1981, the novel was original written in Spanish and translated into English. In every well-structured society, there exist authoritative figures and leaders that are looked upon by their people to provide leadership and security. A successful leader involves themselves with protecting the justice rather than their status or personal interest. Garcia Marquez portrays the bystander effect of authoritative figure’s influences on characters in “A chronicle of a Death Foretold”. The bystander effect is defined as the passive nature of characters to act on injustice and expect others to step in and take control (R).

According to the theory, the presence of other people or just the perception that other people are witnessing the event will decrease the likelihood that an individual will intervene in an emergency due to psychological processes like: