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What is the psychology behind the bystander effect?
Thanks for asking.
At some point in your life you've probably walked past a stranger spread-eagled on the ground outside.
They may have fainted, tripped and injured themselves, or even been attacked.
Now the chances are that if you saw several people were already offering assistance, you carried on walking by.
And that's due to what's known as the bystander effect.
It's a psychosocial phenomenon which typically crops up in emergency situations.
It shows that the more other people are already intervening to help, the less likely we are to do so ourselves.
On the other hand, the likelihood of stepping in increases when you're the only person present.
Why is that then?
One major factor behind the bystander effect is that the presence of multiple onlookers creates a diffusion of responsibility between them.
Think of it like this.
You divide the total responsibility by the number of witnesses.
If I'm the only person nearby, I alone have the victim's fate in my hands.
I simply can't walk away.
But if there are already five people there by the time I arrive, I can walk on guilt free, as the victim is already being taken care of.
Bear in mind that even when you do intervene on your own, there's still a danger you could make an error of judgement.
Emergency situations are often chaotic, and we're less likely to intervene when a situation is ambiguous.
Do you have any examples?
The most widely cited example of the bystander effect is the murder of Italian-American woman Kitty Genovese in New York in 1964.
In the early hours of the 13th March.
She was stabbed and then raped when arriving home after finishing a shift at the bar where she worked.
By the time an ambulance arrived to provide emergency care, it was too late and Genovese died while being transported to hospital.
The case actually stirred a real debate, which led to the first wave of psychosocial research on the bystander effect.
Two weeks after the murder, the New York Times published an article under the headline 37 who saw murder didn't call the police, suggesting Genovese's neighbors were partly to blame for her death.
Were there really 37 people who knowingly ignored such a violent crime?
It turned out that the New York Times article was highly sensationalized and included a number of factual errors.
Nevertheless, at least two witnesses of Genovese's murder were aware of exactly what was happening, and their inaction ruled out any hope of her being saved.
Joseph Fink clearly saw the stabbing and told investigators that he had considered getting his baseball bat, only to take a nap instead in the end.
And another witness called Carl Ross wasted time calling other neighbours for advice first, before eventually calling the police.
The case inspired social sciences researchers John Darley and Bibb Latanay to run several experiments into bystander behaviour.
Indeed, the bystander effect was popularised largely thanks to their work.
There you have it.
Now you know what the psychology is behind the bystander effect.
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