Informative Essay : The Bystander Effect

The Bystander Effect

      Have you ever experienced this situation? You are in a large crowd in the middle of the city, just doing your daily commute. Suddenly, a random pedestrian collided with a bicyclist, and both of them are visibly hurt. Usually, you are moved to help them, but you look at the large number of people around you, and they're not doing anything to help the distressed. Suddenly, you doubt wanting to help them since everyone else aren't trying to help them as well.

      This is the theory of the bystander effect in action. The theory goes that the more witnesses are present during an emergency situation, the less likely people are willing to help the person in need. When there are less to no witnesses at all during the emergency, the probability of someone helping will increase.

      Researchers Bib Latane and John Darley were the first to research in thorough about this effect. To test this theory, they conducted an experiment where subjects were placed in three different conditions. I one room, a lone subject was ask to fill a questionnaire. The other room, two subjects were placed in the same room to fill the questionnaire. In the next room, three subjects were placed in the same room, with two of them being collaborators of the experiments. As they fill the questionnaire, smoke began to fill in the room. In the first room, subjects reported the smoke almost 75% of the time. In the second room with two subjects, it dropped to 38% and in the third room, the two control subjects ignored the smoke, causing only 10% of the time that the smoke was reported.

      One of the most famous examples of the bystander effect was the murder of Catherene Genovese. On March 13, 1964, Catherene was stabbed in front of her house. She asked for help from the dozen of so people observing from a nearby apartment building, but none came to her aid. The attack began at 3:20 am but only after 3:50 am did someone made a police report regarding the incident.

     So why does this phenomena occurs? The first explanation is the diffusion of responsibility due to the presence of other people in the vicinity. When there are other people around, we like to think that someone else will take responsibility, and thus we become slower to make the decision the victim. They might assume that other people will provide better assistance and that their help might be less useful or even inconvenience the victim.

      Another reason is because of our need to conform to the behavior of a group. When other people don't act on a incident, it subconsciously makes us think that the situation at hand is not quite as severe or needing of much attention. If it did, surely other people will try to help as well. Such as the case of Catherene Genovese. When asked why they didn't help, the bystanders had thought the situation to be a lover's quarrel instead of a murder.

     As you can see, the bystander effect is present in each in every one of us. However, having realized this, we should no longer play into its effects. We must learn to resist the urge and do the right thing by always offering a helping hand to those in need, no matter the situation.