The Bystander Effect
The bystander effect is the belief that the more people to witness a scene, such as a murder or crash, the less likely any one individual is to do anything about it.
In 1964 a woman called Kitty Genovese was murdered in New York in front of numerous amounts of people, of which only one of the bystanders shouted to the murderer "leave her alone".
Psychologists decided to test this theory. The psychologists were John Darley and Bibb Latane.
They used an actor to pretend that they were having a life-threatening seizure, of which the participants could not see but could hear them, like Milgram's obedience study. They found that the results were very similar to the Kitty Genovese case. The more people aware that the person is in need of help, the less likely they are to do anything about it.
I believe this to be very true. When there is a big group of people, you naturally assume that out of all the people around you, somebody else would have done/ being doing something to help the person in need. However, if this is what everybody thinks then eventually nobody will help the person, which could result in severe consequences like the Kitty Genovese case.
Psychologists decided to test this theory. The psychologists were John Darley and Bibb Latane.
They used an actor to pretend that they were having a life-threatening seizure, of which the participants could not see but could hear them, like Milgram's obedience study. They found that the results were very similar to the Kitty Genovese case. The more people aware that the person is in need of help, the less likely they are to do anything about it.
My Opinion
I believe this to be very true. When there is a big group of people, you naturally assume that out of all the people around you, somebody else would have done/ being doing something to help the person in need. However, if this is what everybody thinks then eventually nobody will help the person, which could result in severe consequences like the Kitty Genovese case.
Fascinating, I'm intruiged
ReplyDeleteThis is a shocking and counter intuitive piece of research that had a major impact it was published and led to a wide range of research in this area. We will look at bystander apathy when we cover scientific benefits versus ethical costs later on in the year- you might be interested in Latane and Darley's smoke filled room, you might find a clip on you tube.
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