The infamous murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 was reported the medias as 38 witnesses in an apartment block saw or heard the murder but none did anything to save her, not even call the police. In 2007 someone digged into the story and discovered that this was wildly exaggerated. Only a few witnesses has seen the violence and they did in fact call the police - the police just didn't respond in a timely manner.
Of course the original story resonated because it played into the eternal narrative that people "these days" don't care about each other, society is falling apart etc.
It is curious. I am quite young still, but I can already observe myself thinking: “These youngsters shouldn’t do this — it is way to dangerous”
And then I realize, the things I did when I was young were way, way wilder than the things I complain about. And then I shut up, let them be and try to be there and speak the sage words when they need them and no second before.
I am not sure who treats the next generation worse:
Every generation thinks they invented casual sex, every generation thinks the new generation is ruining the world. This has been true as long as history has been recorded.
Interesting thought, I like to think about how there is an inherent juxtaposition of selfishness and selflessness required in evolution itself, and the manifestation of that "perfect conflict" from a non-thinking (un-intelligent) evolving line to a (intelligent )thinking yet still driven by evolution, line. Not sure if that makes any sense. :)
This is a bias we are all prone to. We all need to beware of letting a claim fly quickly into "unquestioned fact" status just because it fits into our narrative.
There is a very interesting small read from Georg Simmel written in 1903 called “The Metropolis and Mental Life” in which the Berlin based Simmel tries to describe how the new mega-cities influence the mind of it’s inhabitants. Even now, more than a century later his text still works.
However only up to a degree — many people like to take some sort of preceived trend (”people are getting more emotionally cold”) and extrapolate it into the future. This extrapolation becomes part of their Weltbild and because we like it when our anecdotes line up with our Weltbild, we start to leave out facts that don’t.
Does it mean that Simmel’s general idea that cities affect people is wrong? Probably not. It is just not as big of a thing as many make themselves belive it is.
Even if it were true, there's a more charitable and in my opinion more plausible explanation: people are afraid to bother the emergency line with redundant calls. These days it's probably more plausible than ever, because we hear of prank calls to the emergency line and don't want to occupy the emergency line more than necessary.
I had a realization the last time we had a fire drill:
It wasn't scheduled, so when the alarm went off, we all looked at each other for a few moments like "is the siren just on the fritz or should we walk out?" After awhile we decided we'd better get going so we all lazily strolled outside.
On the way, I noticed one of my coworkers in a fire marshal uniform, in the corridor, calling out for people to evacuate.
I realized this is a perfect way to prevent the bystander effect: just give a random person a "uniform" (a whistle, a badge, a hat, or a vest, anything simple like that works) and tell them that when the alarm goes off, they are responsible for telling people to leave.
It's as simple as that. Instead of us staring at each other trying to decide whether the group considers it serious enough to go along with, just having that person singled out as the "official" one was enough to get the momentum going.
Relatedly, if you ever need to delegate something like a 911 call, you're supposed to single out a person and tell them, specifically "you, go dial 911" rather than shouting "someone call 911!"
Apparently this makes it far more likely to actually happen.
Interestingly the standard procedure in The Netherlands for medical emergencies (the ones where you find someone on the ground) changed to actually calling yourself over asking a random bystander. Aside from calling you should also put the phone on handsfree and lay it next to the person (on the ground).
This as 112 (911) asks loads of questions. Age of the person, conscious yes/no, what does the skin look like, feel like, etc. If it's about CPR it'll be way easier of course... but procedure is also to call asap. Meaning right after you find the person on the ground.. not after you checked.
I had to call 112 this week. In practice things are often different than any procedure ;)
>Interestingly the standard procedure in The Netherlands for medical emergencies (the ones where you find someone on the ground) changed to actually calling yourself over asking a random bystander. Aside from calling you should also put the phone on handsfree and lay it next to the person (on the ground).
I guess that the "tell a specific person to call 112/999/911" guideline is a leftover from the days where someone would need to physically go and find a wired phone from which to make the call. Nowadays, tending to the victim and making the call are mutually compatible in most situations.
I find this approach of taking individual responsibility much better than handing over authority to a "person in a uniform" as the GP stated. Sure it's easier to blindly trust the "official" one, but it sets up a disempowering dynamic where the group is clueless and only looking for a charismatic leader to point them in the right direction. For something cut as clearly as a fire alarm, there is no reason why everyone over 10 years old can not respond properly as single unit.
> Instead of us staring at each other trying to decide whether the group considers it serious enough to go along with, just having that person singled out as the "official" one was enough to get the momentum going.
Authoritarian structures work quite well in crisis situations, where acting quickly is imperative. It's why the military has such a rigid command structure and political leaders have emergency powers.
Democratic processes work better for longer term planning when there is time for debate, compromise, and developing a deeper understanding of the issues.
I have also been told in training for these kind of events to also tell that person to come back and tell you once they've done it. Apparently people have a tendency to wander off once they've done their task, leaving you not knowing if it's been completed & when help's arriving.
Touching somebody while asking them to do something for you works in most situations, not just a traumatic one. It creates a heightened level of intimacy, which makes the other person feel more obligated to help.
This sets off pretty big alarm bells for me. Touching people is a pretty personal thing, and doing it with ulterior motives seems wrong. P.S. Don't touch me.
Sorry, but I will not ask you should somebody else's life be in danger. Touching, being a personal thing, is intended to take you out of your headspace and place you in the physical world (source: worked as an EMT in the past).
Yep, the increased sense of intimacy that can make somebody feel more obligated to you can also make somebody feel uncomfortable and pressured. It's a technique that can definitely backfire. Using it with strangers won't necessarily give you the result you thought it would. However, I suspect in a "call 911" type of situation the other person is already uncomfortable and it's worth psychologically pulling them closer in order to focus their attention.
Sure, in an emergency situation making someone uncomfortable is a pretty minor concern. I commented specifically because you said "works in most situations, not just a traumatic one". I think it's worth considering that adopting this strategy for non-emergency situations could well create trauma for the person being touched.
Increasing the likelihood of someone doing exactly what you are asking them to is an overt rather than an ulterior motive of accompanying nonverbal communication. (That said, people do have different sensitivities to touch and this can backfire, but in an emergency situation maximizing the expected results of the request to call aid is going to be the highly favored course of action.)
thats the point. It makes a general shout "Call 911" and makes specifically personal, "You, the person I am touching and staring into your eyes, call 911, now!"...
when the alarm went off, we all looked
at each other for a few moments [...]
After awhile we decided we'd better
get going so we all lazily strolled
outside.
That's normal and expected; in most large buildings in my country, there is a weekly fire alarm test, so of course no-one sprints for the door during the first 60 seconds of hearing the siren. It's not like there's visible smoke or flames.
In a way it's even desirable; no-one's getting trampled or crushed when people leave the building at a walking pace.
I get your desire for lack of panic, but the lollygagging around fire alarms terrifies me. If you wait around to see smoke, you are now dramatically more likely to need rescue, or just die.
Remember how obnoxious it is when campfire smoke blows in your direction, and how quickly you scramble to get out of the way. How you still have to blink for a couple seconds to clear your vision and the pain.
Structure fires are 100x that. The smoke has nowhere to go and collects so, so fast. And it's disgustingly choking compared to a simple wood fire cause of all the plastic and oil smoke involved. It'll fill a room top-down in under a minute, and if it hits you you will be as incapacitated as if you had been hit by pepper spray, with no recourse because it's all around you. Meanwhile even if you do escape every breath is ticking years off your life...
Tldr if you hear a fire alarm, stand up and leave without a moment's hesitation. No need to run, just get out quick. Please!!
Yes, to be clear I'm not saying people should wait until they see smoke before they leave.
What I was trying to communicate is "The lack of panic I have observed reflects situations where there was no visible danger, I strongly suspect people would behave differently if danger was visible"
> Tldr if you hear a fire alarm, stand up and leave without a moment's hesitation. No need to run, just get out quick. Please!!
That is specifically counter to the FDNY's guidance on alarms in high rise buildings. You get up, congregate at a stairwell, and wait for instructions from the fire safety director. Simply leaving the building without knowing the nature or location of the emergency is dangerous, and staying where you are may actually be the safest course of action.
When I worked support at a university, in the dim and distant past, it was our responsibility to clear the labs if a fire alarm went off. Students did just generally sit there until they were told to move.
I think if you have more than a dozen people in your org, it's a good idea to appoint a couple of them (in case one is on vacation/off sick/the arsonist) as fire wardens. Not least you have someone who is actually counting who is there so the fire service can get an idea of who might still be in the building.
Of course 99.9% of the time it doesn't matter, but that 0.1% can be very important.
> just give a random person a "uniform" (a whistle, a badge, a hat, or a vest, anything simple like that works) and tell them that when the alarm goes off, they are responsible for telling people to leave.
What an absolutely strange procedure! This as a fire marshal is not responsible for getting people out. People themselves are responsible to act. The fire marshal is a backup!
Here people (big building, multiple companies, etc) are told when they get hired that it's their responsibility to evacuate when the (standardized across Europe) evacuation sound goes off. Then trained people check floors to double check everyone is out, plus assist anyone having difficulty getting out. Anyone not cooperating will be reported.
This all relies on the attitude of the director of each company. Some take safety very seriously, some see it as a waste of time ("nothing will happen").. until eventually something happens.
> Here people (big building, multiple companies, etc) are told when they get hired that it's their responsibility to evacuate when the (standardized across Europe) evacuation sound goes off.
So it's up to everyone individually to determine if leaving the building is actually safe, and to figure out which emergency exits are safe to use?
At a previous employer, I went through the "Emergency Responder" training, which meant that I also kept a reflective orange vest at my desk, with an appropriate label on the back.
We had fire drills where the list of people who knew about the drill-to-come was intentionally kept to a tiny handful of people, usually just one person per floor. When the alarm went off, it was up to us to go into Fire Marshal mode and direct people to leave through the stairs, stay to the right because the fire department personnel will be coming up the inside, etc....
That process was actually surprisingly effective. I was a good choice because I can be a very loud person, when I want. I have maxxed out my SPL meter at 127dBA, and I've checked into what it would take to make an official go at getting the worlds record for "loudest person".
Yup, this is why you need to appoint fire marshals (and first aid) people at a workspace - you have to tell them that if the alarm goes off, this is their job and responsibility.
I mean in theory any alarm should make people panic a bit and start making their way to the exit, but in practice most alarms are false alarms so people don't know if they need to act.
- The article (the news one, haven't read the original yet) talks about the increase of probability that some bystander will act, with increase in group size. The bystander effect study talks about the decrease of probability that a particular individual will act, with decrease in group size. These two things may very well both be true and there may be some non-linear effect at play (i.e. after a certain group size, the increase in the probability of someone acting wins out over the decrease in any one person acting.
In a situation where bystander intervention might happen, I think people, especially those who are willing to intervene, may not be very conscious about cameras around them. Even more so with surveillance cameras.
> decrease of probability that a particular individual will act, with decrease in group size
I believe the study did show that. I heard an interview with one of the authors on the radio (so my memory may be faulty).
So I don't think it really debunked the bystander effect, rather he made a point along the lines of, 'it doesn't really matter, the more people present means it's the more likely that one of them intervenes'.
We should also consider that if there's a larger crowd of bystanders, an individual will feel more sure that others will help them as long as they act. "Safety in numbers" so to say.
My first experience I put down to bystander effect:
I was giving first-aid to a guy with severe lacerations to his hand/arm and didn't want to leave him (partially panic on my behalf) - in a UK city, albeit a side-road, with shops and people walking past - but needed to call for an ambulance.
Nobody would stop and help:
"Help! I need you to call an ambulance."
and people just carried on walking.
In the end I was able to makeshift a bandage with some clothing and leave the guy sitting on the floor long enough to use the phone in the shop I was working at.
The ambulance, despite having the address and business name, drove past and I ended up running after it down the street ... overall an awful experience and very eye-opening.
My takeaway is that I'd give up much sooner seeking help from others, depressing as that is, and - contrary to my first-aid training - leave the patient and call an ambulance myself.
Aside: I wonder if there's a villager/townie effect too?
I would guess there's a goldilocks zone. To many and it becomes impersonal so people can walk away. Too few and people don't feel assured of getting back-up?
Another thing: My understanding of the bystander effect is that it's based on the pop culture understanding of the Kitty Genovese event (see top root comment for real story), which has an additional requirement: The bystanders can't see/talk to each other, but know the others are there in their apartments. The added anonymity is supposed to decrease obligation to help, decreasing the chance anyone will help.
A relevant, classic bystander-effect experiment (Darley and Latane 1968) put several participants, all subjects of the experiment, in a waiting room. Smoke began to come into the room through a vent. In most groups, no one acted for a very long time, even after the smoke led to breathing problems for participants. By contrast, when only one person was in the room, not a group, that person would almost always leave the room or call for assistance.
Differences from the OPs (very interesting) study:
1. In the smoke room, participants know they are in an experimental setting, though they do not know that the waiting room is part of the experiment.
2. The entire group is visible in the waiting room. (In a crowd outside, you don’t know who else might be acting or watching. In the waiting room you can see that no one else is doing anything.)
3. The threat is to you personally as well as to the others in the group - an injury or a fight involving others is less personally affecting than smoke that is making you cough in an enclosed room.
4. D & L experimented with small groups including a single person and saw dramatically different results in the latter case. I’d be interested in seeing what happens late at night when there are just one or two people around - what do the camera show then?
Of these I suspect 2) has the greatest effect. If I see that literally no one in the room is doing anything, I may figure that the situation is probably under control or isn’t a big deal. In a big crowd outdoors I can’t draw that conclusion as clearly.
Could it be that in 1968 you felt social pressure to keep cool and calm and unafraid? In that experiment, the presence of "confederates", people who cooperated with experimenters made everyone much more passive.
In 2019 you feel social pressure to act to look responsible and less pressure to look unafraid, so we think differently.
Whenever I'm in a group like that, people start turning heads, looking at each other, asking if they smell/see it, what do you think it is, etc, and then leaving or reporting it somewhere.
This is all anecdata, but the article and the study are totally contrary to my experience.
Over the years I've witnessed a variety of incidents where bystanders did nothing -- however once someone makes the first move, it seems to become easier for others to lend a hand.
When I was a teen, I dated someone who was a red cross volunteer, which prompted me to take a couple of first aid classes. This has easily been the most useful subject I've ever studied.
I've been witness to a suicide attempt, a cardiac arrest in a bar, an elderly lady who fell down the stairs at the opera, several cases of guys beating on their wives in public, two drunken attempted robberies, a variety of (literal) gay bashing, random subway violence, and oodles of shit I can't recall. The latest was two weeks ago: a hit and run with a teen victim with a very nasty headwound.
In every one of those cases, no one did anything. The old lady at the opera was the worst, I hadn't seen it happen, but I noticed a crowd of people on the staircase on my way out. Maybe 20 people standing around her in a circle. I asked if anyone had called for an ambulance yet, and no one even gave a coherent response...
I've also been the victim of a random assault, in a very busy park in broad daylight, and no one helped out. No one even dialed the emergency number, no one even approached me to ask whether I was ok afterwards. There were probably around a hundred witnesses.
I don't know whether this is a regional problem; most of these incidents occurred in Belgium. Belgians aren't the most outgoing or the most eager to take risks in general, but still.
Don't count on others to make the first move. Learn first aid and help out whenever someone is in trouble. Even if it does mean you'll be late for that important meeting or you could get blood on your shirt.
Violence is a bit trickier; what's worked well in my experience is to walk up to the aggressor, but to pick someone else from the crowd and plainly tell them "give me a hand". That gets the ball rolling.
Edit/addendum: every time something like this happens, I get an adrenaline rush and am scared out of my mind. I'm sure this happens to the other witnesses as well. I get it, it's hard to push through that, but do it anyway.
When I was growing up in a medium sized town in Africa. The community was particularly active when it came to apprehending criminals be it a thief or someone who had just assaulted a woman. The young men of the town would chase down the criminal. They always got caught because everyone would participate. The alleged criminal would then be frog marched to the nearest policeman. Look perhaps one or two members of the public would throw in a punch or a kick at the thief but mostly they just held him. The last thing you wanted was to be charged for assaulting a criminal. Anyway other vigilante communities were not as gentle as in my town and alleged thieves got seriously hurt and couple even died from mob justice. So there was a big drive to stamp out the public apprehending criminals. This introduced some uncertainty and sometimes people don't act. In short we are making the right laws and making people aware of them. But sometimes the effect is that we are left uncertain hence we don't act.
I think confusion is a big part of it. You often don't see the start of an incident, you're lost in your own business before your attention is drawn to something that might be nearly over before you even look at it. Who are these people? Is someone just messing around or is this real? Do they know each other? It takes us a long time generally to figure out how to respond to the truly unexpected.
the article and the study
are totally contrary to
my experience
The article's definition of bystander intervention includes 'drunks held back from fighting by their buddies', assisting after the fight is over, and things like that.
And they only looked at conflict between people in city centres - so suicide attempts, cardiac arrests, falls, and hit-and-runs would all be excluded.
The article's findings sound plausible to me, given the inclusion and exclusion criteria.
"lainly tell them "give me a hand". That gets the ball rolling."
is pretty tough. People have lots of reasons to not get involved in physical altercations and plenty of them are valid, so you're putting a pretty big burden on them.
Sure. But standing around, mouth agape, while a barkeep is getting harrassed by a drunk angrily swiging a bottle at their face is placing a pretty big burden on everyone else. "See something, say something" is the least anyone can do.
Of course, don't put yourself at risk unless you have to. But if there's a chance you can do some good, you should at least try.
As a victim of assault, getting physically injured sucks, but seeing a bunch of people around you refusing to help, that's pretty damaging to your view on humanity. Insult to injury, I guess you could say.
Even people whose job it is to help will sit and watch stuff happen - I stopped an RNLI boat from floating away on an incoming tide, a lifeguard sat in their van and watched. One other person did come over to see if I needed help.
I think in that situation the two boat riders who had temporarily abandoned the boat - and who arrived back 5mins later - were viewed by this lifeguard as 'responsible' and they didn't want to step on their toes. But that boat, which they were using for an active search at the time, would have floated off.
What was most crazy to me was that they didn't thank me, they just sat in their van still.
> several cases of guys beating on their wives in public, two drunken attempted robberies, a variety of (literal) gay bashing, random subway violence, and oodles of shit I can't recall. The latest was two weeks ago: a hit and run with a teen victim with a very nasty headwound.
Indeed. I certainly did not mean to imply that Belgium is particularly violent. These anecdotes span about two decades. Having spent most of that time living in dense population centres, usually in the poorer parts of town, has certainly added some bias to my sample.
It's quite shocking to me how many social science and social psychology experiments have been debunked in recent years. It's as if the whole field is filled with false research. They should do what psychology has done and start a massive replication effort of most cited results. [0] That should bring back some credibility back to the field.
Plus I would expect it would also be a function of the legal system. Some countries like France are typically hostile to self-defence / vigilanties as opposed to a country like the US. If you intervene and the assaulter gets hurt, you might be in significant legal troubles.
I was shocked to learn about the difference a while back, especially concerning first aid. In Germany you are facing criminal charges if you dont aid injured people, by either first aid or calling an ambulance. Then you have countries where not even dragging a person out of a burning car is protected under good Samaritan laws.
Yes, so researchers must be very careful to caveat their findings. Not only as footnotes in the middle of the article but also in general terms in abstract and introduction as those are the sections copied into newspapers and such. My 2c.
The stakes become even higher when people attempt to use Social Psychology as either the basis for moral frameworks or in evaluating morality. This can be problematic for a multitude of reasons (bias being the largest), and the biggest offender I've found is Jonathan Haidt and his 4 moral evaluators. Actually, I think in The Righteous Mind he's up to 5 now, time will tell if that continues to change with continued "no comment" about how, maybe, his approach is flawed.
Also; awareness of the bystander effect may have led to increased pro-activeness. This is really something that would need to have data going further back to figure out if the original effect existed.
See another post in this thread where someone has recieved specific training to counteract the bystander effect.
I have come across the bystander effect often enough in popular culture, that I would say a very significant amount of people is aware of the concept, even if they might not remember its specific name.
also, the way I read it is that bystander effect was posited to be something like
nobody else is doing anything and therefore I won't do anything
but if society has changed and somebody does get involved, it would be more like
that other guy is doing something and therefore I will get involved too
because we are social animals and we do what feels right, what we see others doing. So, although the outcomes might have changed, the process is still the same.
I remember reading a book some years ago (Lauren Slater, Opening Skinners Box) about some of the psychological experiments which had been done in the past. One of the general conclusions of those experiments that stood out to me seemed to be that only about 30% of people would actively take initiative if given the chance, but that generall people would follow social leads. I remember passing this book around at work to a couple of friends who both said that they felt that reading about this concept made them feel as if they were more aware of the social pressures to not act in situations and that they would therefore be more likely to step up as a result.
Yep. I used not to act in situations, because I assumed it is not my business, that I will look like nosy idiot who messes into things without them being her business and nothing is the correct/expected/respectful action. Some articles I read convinced me of the opposite, that it is ok for me to react and the previous passive strategy often amounts to enabling.
I think awareness of the effect changes the behavior more - at least for me - I usually wouldn't act in situations where someone needed help because I don't feel particularly qualified but knowing that nobody else is likely to respond I try to help.
I just try to help untill I see someone more qualified take over to avoid the issue. Don't know if it's because I'm aware of this effect or just maturing but I know when I was younger I just avoided situations like this and I had a few recently where I did actually try to help.
Even with flawed studies aside, the word science is used very liberally to describe these fields. Even psychology’s most robust and well tested theories can’t come anywhere close to making accurate predictions.
No field of science made accurate predictions when it started. It took centuries of hard work to arrive at the levels of precision and accuracy that we take for granted in, say, physics or chemistry.
And psychology is attempting to study phenomena that are far more complex than anything in physics or chemistry. Being wrong or incomplete, doesn’t mean it’s not science.
While most of what you just said is open to debate, I was merely commenting on the scientific maturity of the fields. Which to me seem relevant to a discussion on the debunking of it’s theories.
To be frank, this study likely did not debunk anything.
Even 30 years ago, psychologists had outlined the criteria by which the bystander effect does not occur. A well known criterion (seen in many comments on HN) is to direct your plea for help to a single individual amongst the bystanders ("You! Call 911!" as opposed to "Someone call 911!"). Another aspect that's been known for over 30 years is that if someone in the crowd feels (s)he is an outsider, that person is a lot more likely to intervene.
Did they account for these in the study? How will they determine if a particular person thought of himself as an outsider? If they did not account for these, then the article is attacking a strawman.
Besides the dangers of getting involved, it's sometimes hard to tell whether something is a serious incident or just people fooling around. I've seen both sides of this: Guys I assumed to be friends jokingly greeting each other while in fact one was starting a serious fight and the other one was too drunk to react appropriately. At some other time, I saw a woman yelling at a man, while he was somehow holding her. Seconds later, they were laughing and walking off side by side.
I know this is an "armchair academic" comment, but I wonder if `places that are likely to have active surveillance` strongly intersects with `places that the bystander effect is less likely`. In other words, I wonder if there's a crippling selection bias.
The reason I think this is possible is because I'm way more likely to help someone if I don't think I'm endangering myself by doing so. Areas that are actively surveilled are probably more likely to be safe areas for me to do so.
Surveillance cameras do not correlate with "not in danger". It's not like people are watching these things in real time and jumping to action when they see something. After all, if that were the case, then there'd be no reason for bystanders to even get involved in these incidents at all.
I'm not as confident as you that they "do not correlate with not in danger." And I'm much less confident that they don't correlate with "perception of danger."
They definitely correlate with a lot of things. They correlate with buildings and power lines. And other things. And I think some of those things correlate with perception of safety.
UK cities have surveillance cameras with control rooms where people sit and watch, real time, and take action. Some have audio connections to allow voice communication too.
Or they did a few years ago, it's possible the police budget restrictions from "austerity" have put an end to it, but AFAIK it still happens.
I believe the study showed that the probability of any individual getting involved increases if there is no-one else present. i.e. they are the only one who can help.
Surveillance cameras might make people feel someone else will take responsibility.
The article only uses footage from a few cities of Western culture. Good Samaritan laws are not universal and the lack of one can have a chilling effect on whether people will help. This is especially prominent in China where there are a number of famous cases where the victim sued the Good Samaritan claiming they caused the damages. It’s so prevalent that Alibaba is trying to help promote social good by offering insurance in case you help the elderly and are sued for it: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-china-good-samari...
Fear of legal retaliation and the Bystander Effect are two different things through. The bystander effect is supposedly a psychological phenomena where if you're in a crowd you feel less personal responsibility. If people's thinking is short-circuited by legal considerations, you can't study the natural psychological phenomena.
That's not the bystander effect though. In China, they're afraid of legal repercussions. In the bystander effect, it's diffusion of responsibility. Same effect but different causes.
Fair and interesting point. The same outcome is irrelevant to the supposed phenomenon that causes it, though the study wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
> Instead of more bystanders creating an immobilizing “bystander effect,” the study actually found the more bystanders there were, the more likely it was that at least someone would intervene to help.
Perhaps with more people around one person considers that he will gain support, so the danger of acting will be minimized.
Would be interesting to see if it went up linearly or some other function of the number of ppl.
Also, what do they define as a 'bystander'? If it's ppl with pre-existing relationships (which would not be clear from CC footage) it doesn't particularly go against the bystander effect.
I think both could be true. Consider T to be the likelihood an individual will intervene, N the number of individuals, and P the probability of an intervention.
N, T = 1, 0.5 then P = 0.5
N, T = 10, 0.2 then P = (1-.8^10) = 0.9
Basically, the likelihood of an average individual to intervene may decline as there are more people, but the likelihood that at least one individual does intervene increases as crowd size does.
Or simply that in this case, the bystander effect didn’t occur.
It’s also why today when something goes wrong, people are told to look directly at specific people and say “call the cops”/ “hold their head” and so on,
Or that the bystander effect did occur, but that X% of people aren't affected by it, and in a larger group it becomes more likely that one of those X% of people will be around.
If the bystander effect did exist, even the ambient possibility that you might be under surveillance at any given moment (as might be felt increasingly around the world, in 2019, regardless of who you are, time or place) seems like it would make dramatically less likely that the effect would actually occur.
isn't it also possible the fact that alot of people have heard of the bystander effect they more willing to do something because they believe no one else will?
You could also argue the opposite: That because the bystander effect is well-known now, surely that means other people in the crowd will be more willing to act, and therefore you don't have to.
This article incorrectly claims that the bystander effect is when a group of people are less likely to help than an individual, when in fact the bystander effect is when an individual becomes less likely to act in the presence of a crowd. The article repeatedly makes this claim, but it's not hard to look up how the bystander effect is described and defined to see how completely wrong this is.
Um, what? The article doesn’t do this at all. This is straight from the 2nd paragraph:
“The “bystander effect” holds that the reason people don’t intervene is because we look to one another. The presence of many bystanders diffuses our own sense of personal responsibility, leading people to essentially do nothing and wait for someone else to jump in”
It’s clearly talking about individual behaviour in the presence of a crowd. You basically restated this exact point, then claimed the article didn’t make it!
> It’s one of the most enduring urban myths of all: If you get in trouble, don’t count on anyone nearby to help. Research dating back to the late 1960s documents how the great majority of people who witness crimes or violent behavior refuse to intervene. Psychologists dubbed this non-response as the “bystander effect”
The author said the bystander effect was "this non-response" which he describes in the previous sentence as "if you get in trouble don't count on anyone nearby to help." This is the very first sentence in the article.
> A new study published this year in the American Psychologist finds that this well-established bystander effect may largely be a myth. [...] The study finds that in nine out of 10 incidents, at least one bystander intervened, with an average of 3.8 interveners.
The author claims that the bystander effect is disproved if, in a group of people, "at least one" person intervenes.
> Instead of more bystanders creating an immobilizing “bystander effect,” the study actually found the more bystanders there were, the more likely it was that at least someone would intervene to help.
The author again claims that the bystander effect is disproved if "at least one" person helps.
The article essentially claims that the more people there are the more likely it is that _someone_ will intervene. Which isn't the same as no one feeling less inclined to help since there are other people around.
The whole point of the "bystander effect" is that this diffusion of responsibility leads to nobody intervening. Nobody cares if the chances of a specific bystander intervening goes down when there's a crowd, all that matters is whether someone intervenes, and the bystander effect claimed that a crowd meant the chances of intervention would go down overall.
I'm understanding that's not the finding, although that's the popularly understood point. You would expect each person to be individually less likely to help when there are other people around. Somebody else might have already intervened, and you might just be getting in the way. Not everybody can help, at least not at once. I mean, in some situations, people actually fear to intervene, and have a legitimate fear for their own safety, but if they can call the police once they're secure (or if they are clearly secure e.g. viewing from a distance), people do it. A lot of people called about Kitty Genovese as it was happening, watching it from their apartments. That became a newspaper article - which was basically typical right-wing linkbait: it wasn't slow police response, it was the heartless crowd that killed Kitty.
That Slate dot com tier take became a theory, developed experiments, and discovered something that was obviously mathematically true: if not everybody in a group helps someone that they see in distress (only a subset do), but individuals always help when alone, then in groups, the average time before response for each individual is going to go up, and the average likelihood of any response at all from a particular individual is going to go down.
This would be true even if people were always helped faster by groups rather than individuals, and a subset of every group always intervened. The types of people that bystander experiments found to be likely interveners could just adhere to the stereotypes that people think of as physically authoritative and look to when something occurs. People look to them to intervene (large, male, athletic, maybe ethnic or rough looking in criminal/street situations) maybe those people intervene because there no one for them to pass the responsibility off to.
> This article incorrectly claims that the bystander effect is when a group of people are less likely to help than an individual
You are right. On the other hand, it may well be the correct popular definition of 'bystander effect'. Pop-sci (and pop-psych in particular) terms have a habit of being subtly redefined in the process of research→book→podcast→watercooler.
Could you list some examples? I often see this happen with people mischaracterizing the Dunning-Kruger effect around the watercooler but I’m having trouble coming up with any other cases.
> The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present. The greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that one of them will help. Several factors contribute to the bystander effect, including ambiguity, group cohesiveness, and diffusion of responsibility that reinforces mutual denial of a situation's severity.
Does that mean each individual is like likely to help _individually_ or does it mean that each _situation_ have less intervention?
Because if we're measuring individual response, then sure, I agree - if I'm hurt, I don't want 10 people rushing to me anyway.
i.e. if 1 bystander with 1x persons intervening = 100% response and then 2 bystanders with 1x persons intervening = 50% response...... I think this is a terrible way to measure it.
The claim is that when there are several people standing around and some emergency arises, everyone will just assume someone else is going to help, and no one will end up helping.
I’ve been taught multiple times that due to the bystander effect, should you take command of a situation and need to delegate you should always delegate specifically (e.g. tell one person to call 911 rather than shouting that someone should)
While that's certainly good advice, I don't think that's really a "bystander effect" correction as it is if there's multiple people and nobody takes charge then nothing gets organized, and if you don't delegate specifically then nobody knows who you're talking to and this produces confusion.
The last two times I took a first aid course I was told to do this _specifically_ to override the bystander effect. Both times, the instructor named and explained the bystander effect, and said the best way to overcome it was to assign tasks to specific individuals.
I have specifically had this explained to me as being due to the bystander effect. "Someone call 999/911" - chances are no one will do it, due to the bystander effect; "You (points) call 999/911" - they probably will.
There are two issues with how this study is discussed and it may not be a reproducibility issue exactly.
1) published in american psychology - samples europeans and south africans...
Without sampling Americans where the effect was first displayed I don’t think we can call it ‘largely a myth’. There are huge potential cultural factors here for why someone might intervene or not.
2) There’s a sampling issue. Looking at police reports means committed crimes, while something intervened may not be reported to the police
Cultural background probably has a lot of influence on this.
Where I grew up (a small city in Eastern Europe) it would be unthinkable not to intervene in many cases (although some things like gang or drunk fights would be excluded). The mentality in a capital would be completely different. As people move their habits can significantly influence prior "general findings".
And yet this study took place in a capital city, a major urban centre and a country tow, but found no significant difference in the results between them. That's despite big differences in the local crime and violence rates (I expect Cape Town being the outlier).
Cape Town has some areas that feel like an European town and some areas just filled with home-made sheds. I imagine that the crime rates are different in the places where there are actually cameras.
Are the surveillance cameras clearly visible and the bystanders are aware of them? I wonder if the bystanders would react differently if they weren't aware that they are being recorded. Another thing I wonder is if they refuse to help then maybe they think there'll be repercussions like being ostracized when the footage goes public.
Just noting here that there is no necessary contradiction between the probability of at least one bystander helping increasing with number of bystanders, and the individual propensity of helping going down with an increasing number of bystanders, even assuming that people have the same propensity function.
Its absolutely amazing finding....it teaches to trust more and be little more secure someone out there will take care of me if in trouble. That kind of gives so much sense of hope and debunk that "fear stranger" or "no one is gonna help you" myth which pertuated for decades.
I do think the bystander effect is true. But not always. It’s part of the zeitgeist. In the past, people were more assertive. Then we became sheep somehow. And recently I noticed that people know they have to do something.
Does the paper account for whether bystanders knew the individuals involved? You can't treat a group of people on the street as an unstructured independent sample...
totally un-scientific but i just feel like things like "identitism", "communitism", nationalism, etc. have been on the rise in the past decade for some reason. and by protecting the group they belong to, people also end up protecting individual making up these groups.
Of course the real problem is the uplifting attitude that is written.
Where really violent crime is happening as now in Western European cities, London, Berlin, etc. people got to know the very real consequences of 'intervening' frequently resulting in seriously harming oneself or even getting killed. There have been instances where the police was not able to help. There are regular occurances of rescue teams being attacked to prevent them rescuing the victims of attacks. The even started a campaign to promote not attacking rescuers.
Also, in a democracy the use of force is supposed to lie with the administration only and of course there should only be very limited room for 'bystanders' 'to self-police to protect their communities and others' unfortunately we know the opposite is true.
Hmm, searching around for the type of statistics you are talking about, I get articles to a couple of anecdotal stories that are frequently repeated on sites like Jihad Watch, Voice of Europe, RT, etc.
Unless you can provide some actual statistics, I would dismiss this as unfounded far-right propaganda.
It's conflating a couple of recent examples (london bridge knife terror attack trial reports is one) where the police protect themselves and wait for backup but the public try to intervene against their orders and trying to imply there's an agenda by the police to let these things happen.
The attacks on firefighters and medics have been increasing at least in Germany, though finding reporting about it is a bit difficult since politicians used it a s a pretext to change the level of penalty for attacks on medics and firefighters and included cops in the category. Especially including the last group but not doctors and nurses in clinics makes it look more like another law and order push then anything else. As such statistics often tend to group together cops with first responders, which makes any comparison useless.
This is especially problematic since its a historical logical loop in Germany to charge people getting beaten up by cops for attacking a police officer. If they hadnt attacked a police officer it would have been illegal for the cop to beat them up and the prosecutor would be forced to charge the officer for assault. If there is however a open case against the victim, the charges will get dropped most of the time or at least paused in especially controversial cases till after the trial is over. As such you are highly incentivized to never report a cop for assault, especially as even statements of singular police officers get routinely valued higher then reports from multiple bystanders who dont know the victim. If you dont have a tape of what happened your chances of going to jail are high. This isnt something limited to protests and other large public events, there is an infamous case where police officers mixed up a 60yo translator assigned to a suspect with being connected to the accused and she ended beaten up in a police station and charged with attacking police officers. She was lucky that the judge believed her medical examiner that the reports of the cops at the station couldnt be true given the evidence. The other witnesses disagreeing with that story would have likely not been enough. The charges for assault against the cops were however dropped as usual.
You can find statistics about attacks on firefighters and medics (and not police officers) here for Bavaria (in German though but just scroll to the first graph)
It is more problematic then the shown increase from 250/265 to 327 since medics and firefighter representatives mention a high number of unreported cases. The article mentions a survey among 800 of them had 92% reporting getting insulted or threatened and 1/4 getting physically attacked during the last 12 month. Link to the study in the article is unfortunately down.
I am curious: do you consider yourself to be on the left or right end of the political spectrum?
I ask because even if your message is not explicitly political, it indicates to me that you might be leaning to the right and I am curious about what the root-differences between that and someone like myself who is probably more left leaning really are. Clearly it's related to fear, but I have fears too (like climate change or fascism). It's really interesting to me why people fear one but not the other, in each direction. It feels like there is some sort of fundamental psychological principle that decides whether you are one or the other.
I agree with everything said here and I'm unambiguously on the very far left. Its just observational. Sometimes it's dangerous to intervene. Sometimes the people who intervene get killed. That's just a fact. If somebody is drowning on the Chicago side of Lake Michigan when the waves are bad, if you jump in to help you're 80% going to die. You're as likely to die as the person you're trying to help. You might not even help their odds, they may manage to swim back and you will still drown. If a pimp hits a prostitute, and you intervene, he may kill you. In some places, he probably is going to kill you. And he's not going to kill her. He's going to kill you.
I don't know how to convince someone that happens a lot. It happens a lot, though. A lot of people still intervene, especially if everything happens quickly, and just get killed. But most people I think need to start sharing looks with strangers, figuring each other out and who looks like they can think of a plan, and who might be able to fight, and hope that you time and execute well enough with your new confederates so none of you get seriously hurt.
Somebody can be Islamaphobically screaming at two south asian women on the train, maybe hit one of them, and you and a couple other strangers get up to protect them, and that person stabs all three of you to death.
> really violent crime is happening as now in Western European cities, London, Berlin, etc.
Can you elaborate? Judging from statistics these both seem like reasonably safe large cities.
I wouldn’t recommend getting personally involved if two criminal gangs are in the middle of a knife fight or something. Getting the hell away and then calling the police from a safe distance seems like a better idea.
Yep. Crime statistics actually mean it's safer to be in these cities than a small village. Safety in numbers! Oxford Street in London may have the most pickpockets operating but it also has vastly more shoppers making it safer than your local towns shopping area.
It's a different thing really. The old theory is not bystander doesn't intervene because it's dangerous but that they thought otter people would help.
In the UK when it's dangerous the police protect themselves as a matter of priority often retreating. This led to one situation of the knife terrorist attack on London bridge where the public did intervene and risk their own lives when the police stayed back. However it's not the case all the time with groups of people and the bystander effect and that example actually disproves the bystander effect too!
Speaking for London, although many feel safe in the city. Most people (including me) aren’t stupid enough to get involved in a violent altercation if you happen to stumble across one.
It’d be foolish to get between 2 gangs fighting.
Alternatively if someone just collapsed on the street during rush hour, many will come over to help.
