The Bystander Effect

[akashiver]

First there was Neil Gaiman's post on a group of people's failure to help a blind man get out of a bathroom; then I saw this article on the failure of passerbys to help a man hit by a car. I was a bit annoyed with the latter article for not mentioning the Bystander Effect, the well-known psychological phenomenon in which large crowds actually decrease people's liklihood of responding to emergancy situations.

I searched for videos of BE experiments and found a silent version of the smoke study, in which participants were told to fill out a test. As the study participants were answering the exam, smoke began to fill the room. If there was only one test-taker in the room, he or she got up and left. If there was more than 1 test-taker, all of the test-takers remained seated, sometimes until the point that the room was entirely filled with smoke.

Sadly, this experiment has been replicated many times in real life, as in the 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, which killed 167 people. Most of the guests "continued celebrating, in defiance of the smoke seeping into the rooms. One man ordered a rum and Coke to go. When the first reporter arrived at the fire, he saw guests sipping their cocktails in the driveway, laughing about whether they would get to leave without paying their bills."

Only 17% of the guests responded to the emergancy, compared to 60% of the hotel's employees. Guests who did respond fell into the classic BE responder profile - they were people who had been trained to respond to emergancies (like doctors), and/or who felt responsible for the welfare of the people in the room (like party organizers).

Other important factors include whether the person actually saw the accident occur (i.e. saw the fire or saw the person collapse), and perceived the risk-factors of responding to the emergancy.

Here's
a video of a pair of giggly high schooler's replication of the "heart attack" experiment, in which a person would collapse in the presence of bystanders. Generally speaking, people will repond only if they actually see the person fall. If they see a person on the ground, they will walk around the body, not stopping to check if the person is ok.

Anyway, handwringing articles like the NYT one annoy me, because they take these incidents as an opportunity to bemoan the rise in crime or collapse in civic virtue without ever mentioning that this is a well-documented phenomenon that can effect everyone, everywhere.

It would be more worthwhile to dwell on the critical lessons of the Bystander Effect, which are:

1) If you see something that alarms you, *react.* It's better to be wrong and embarassed than to be right and endanger yourself and others.

2) If you are a victim of an accident, don't assume a crowd will help you. Pick out individuals (not groups) to appeal to for help, and give them specific tasks to do, i.e. "call 911."

And that's your social psych info for the day.

Comments

[unforth.livejournal.com]

Thanks for taking the time to write this - it's way interesting, I feel like now that I know it's a "thing" I'll be more likely to try to respond in the future, rather than just be another bystander.

I wonder if this can't be expanded somewhat even in to the realm of politics, etc. - there are many injustices (ie prevarication, bribery, etc.) which many of us would decry in private that stand mute about in public. Hmm... (sorry to take things into this area, it's just something that's been on my mind a lot recently...)

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

Analogies can be made, but I'm wary of them.

In searching for videos and articles to link to this post, I came across a slew of conservative rants that had confused the Bystander Effect with acts of charity (i.e. do you give money to the panhandler, or just walk by?) Not only was the anti-liberal ranting highly irritating, but these articles completely missed the point of the *actual* Bystander Effect, thus allowing their audiences to wander away feeling smug about not being a commie-liberal-bystander instead of recognizing that the B.E. affects everyone.

[gollumgollum.livejournal.com]

Pick out individuals (not groups) to appeal to for help, and give them specific tasks to do, i.e. "call 911."

Even better, tell them to call 911 and then come back. Because otherwise they'll just leave, their conscience absolved because they made a phone call, and you're stuck there waiting for the help that may or may not be coming because you don't know for sure who they called and what they said.

Good advice and an important topic.

[kendokamel.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that all this comes up. A few nights ago, I had the most bizarre dream in which I was in London, helping the victim of a hit-and-run accident, because everyone else was just standing around gawking, or ignoring things altogether.

I guess even dream bystanders aren't very effective.

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

They're the worst kind.