the bystander effect

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information taken from: http://voices.yahoo.com/the-bystander-effect-lesson-paying-attention-7611154.html

On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese, a young woman from Queens was attacked and killed on the street. The New York Times published a shocking front page story alleging 38 of Kitty Genovese's neighbors either saw or heard the attack and failed to call for help. Over the years, further investigations uncovered flaws in the original story, but it is still appalling. How could 38 people ignore a woman's desperate screams for help?

Researchers and psychologists have reached shocking conclusions about human behavior in conjunction with this case. The "Bystander Effect" theory states as a number of bystanders increases, the likelihood of one person stepping into help decreases. So when people are in groups, responsibility becomes diffused. People begin to assume that someone else will make the call for help.

Would you speak up if you saw someone shoplifting in a crowded mall? Would you call authorities if you saw someone hit a parked car outside a crowded restaurant? Most people would argue yes, of course they would step in. Yet television shows and news stories tell different tales. For example, ABC's show "What Would You Do?" is a hidden-camera reality show that studies human nature in public scenarios. Some of the situations include a person stealing gas, a tutor hitting on a student, and a pregnant woman drinking alcohol. The number of bystanders who simply stay quiet in these situations is shocking. It's a great demonstration of the bystander effect, but what does this say about our society?

What possible explanations do we have for the bystander effect in the year 2011? Have we become so self-centered that we fail to notice our responsibility in group situations? Perhaps our dependence on technology is the culprit. We have evolved into a society focused on our emails, social media, and texting. We are so immersed in technology that we've become completely oblivious to the real world. Our society's apparent apathy for other humans might simply be a case of not paying attention. We have places to go, things to do, and Facebook statuses to update. How often have you walked past someone on the sidewalk with their head buried in this cell phone? How often have you been the one on the sidewalk with a phone attached to your ear? How many situations have we inadvertently ignored because we were too worried about ourselves? How many situations have we walked past thinking "someone else will take care of that"? It might be time for all of us to take a break from the land of technology and return to planet Earth.

Technology is an amazing thing. It's easy to get carried away in a sea of laptops, smart phones, and the ability to communicate without ever opening your mouth. At some point, we need to come back to reality and accept responsibility as individuals. The last thing our society needs is another Kitty Genovese story.

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photo by liminalmike

http://www.fighttimes.com/magazine/magazine.asp?article=800

Are there ways to increase your chances of receiving help from bystanders? This article seeks to shed some light on the phenomenon of Bystander Apathy, which is often overlooked in self defense, and give you a few possible ways and tips to help reduce the chance of a witness ignoring you when you need help. As many people have never even heard of Bystander Apathy/Effect, it is my wish to at least address and make you aware of this phenomenon. Many people have a false sense of security surrounding receiving help from strangers, often thinking they are safer in larger crowds. Being aware of the realities and employing appropriate psychological techniques could eliminate possible negative outcomes of the bystander effect.

When faced with a situation in which we need help, often receiving physical assistance from bystanders is not as assured as we often think it would be. Of course, most of us realize that being attacked at night time in a dark alley is a definite possibility, however, during the day light while surrounded by a crowd of people there is little chance of being attacked, and even if attacked surely you would receive help. Right?

Obviously most people would think someone would surely come to help. We live in a moral society afterall. The hard truth is that you could very well be left as alone and receive as little help in the middle of a crowd of people as you would at night time in an empty and dark alley way. This is reality.

We've all heard the old anecdote, "there is safety in numbers". According to well reviewed research that is simply not quite the case due to a rather common phenomenon called "Bystander Apathy".

Infact, according to research by Latane and Darley, in 1968, a person in trouble is much more likely to receive help from a bystander when there are only one or two bystanders than when there is a large crowd of people surrounding the victim.

This is not a simple phenomenon; the decision to help is a very complex one that involves many factors.

Let's delve into some of these factors in order to possibly gain knowledge of possible techniques to diminish the unwillingness of a bystander to help.

First, let's look at a particularly well known example of Bystander Apathy. The following is a well studied example of bystanders showing extreme apathy and not helping a person who clearly needed it. There are many examples, however the most well known case of Bystander Apathy, and the one which spurred many more studies and theories about helping in a crisis, is the Kitty Genovese murder. In 1964, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in an attack that lasted 45 minutes in her apartment building in New York City. It was witnessed by 38 of her neighbors who did nothing to help in any way. None even called the police. (Davis and Palladino, 1997).

This incident more than any other prompted John Darley and Bibb Latane, two social psychologists, to research the phenomenon and discover the reasons for why this happens in our society. In 1970 they published their study on "bystander apathy" and discovered that the will to help a victim in need follows a model of intervention that involves five distinct stages. More to the point, any bystander has to answer five questions in order to help. If any one of these questions is not answered in the positive, a bystander will remain unwilling to help ( David A. Gershaw, Ph.D.)