The bystander effect

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A video showing the bystander effect:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsPfbup0ac[/youtube]


How do you feel about this?

I thought that was interesting.

It's hard to know what I would actually do if I was in that position. I'd like to think that I would do the right thing and help.

There was actually an incident at our Christmas party where one of the lads had collapsed outside. The doormen at the club made me help him out because I was sober, but someone had given him drugs, so really the doormen should have got him some medical attention.

I just think that people would rather turn a blind eye and let other people deal with it.

Wow scary.
I know I would have called 911 (or whatever the equivalent is there).

Ezra, you sound like a really great person and I hope people appreciate you!!

I find it strange that so many people just walked past and did nothing. The people in that clip must all be faking for the sake of creating that clip. As cynical and avoidant as I am, I have offered to help people on the street who seemed to be in need of urgent medical attention. I'm sure anyone would do that.

Unfortunately, I have to disappoint you, but they are not faking it, it is very much for real.

They are controlled by mob mentality.

they left something out of thier hypothesis. it's london. those people are londonians, or whatever you call them. I'm sure it would even take longer if you were in Somalia.

There you have it: Many people on this board are considered to have a disorder because they would not conform to the crowd but actually help - business suit on the guy or not.

I can't see the video but what I can say is that I don't do this bystander effect crap. A couple years ago there was this young girl running in the park behind my house in 95 degree weather and she just kept doing laps over and over. I kept watching in case she passed out. Eventually I saw she disappeared and I went out in my backyard to see that she didn't fall out of my sight line and she did, she was on the ground about 200ft away from me and her mom was there screaming at her. The mom was trying to pull her back up and telling her to keep running and the girl was crying and hitting her mom and saying she couldn't. That made me SO ANGRY. I yelled out to the mom "is everything ok?" And she was like "yeah" and made a hand gesture of "leave us alone" and I said in return "it's really dangerous to have her run in this weather and she's ran enough", and she said "yeah, yeah" and then grabbed her daughter and disappeared. Her daughter came back out an hour later and started running again and I went outside and watched her again with my phone in hand and my arms crossed with disgust, so her mom knew that I'm watching and will take action if necessary.

I won't stand for people being abused or bullied. I will also not turn a blind on if someone needs medical attention. No one should.

You're being very narrow minded.

Do you think the people exhibiting the bystander effect, if you asked them, would say "I'd walk past an injured person"? No, they wouldn't, and they don't.

I actually think this would be a very interesting experiment- are autistic people less likely to exhibit the bystander effect? - but unless an experiment is done that shows your pet hypothesis is true, it is useless to say that it is.

Since I live in a city, I have been in the position of the people walking past many times. I have also visited many cities and been in that position in those cities too. It's a commonality of cities. My responses have included everything shown in the video from walking right past, to intervening (as one man did near the end), to intervening after I saw somebody else intervene (as one woman did) to a response not shown in the video: alerting an official (security guard, cop, calling 911).

When I was younger (teens and early 20's) I always intervened. This had mixed results. On ocassion it meant helping somebody who was injured or sick, usually by finding out what was wrong and then getting official help (cop, security guard,911). Most of the time when I intervened, the person was too drunk or high to respond coherently yet the problem seemed to be only that they were drunk or high (rather than injured) and if they were coherent, what they wanted from me was money. Once, when I leaned in to see what was wrong, the person grabbed my purse and tried to get it off my shoulder. That must be a known scam since the narrator says that sometimes people don't intervene "for safety".

As I got older and wiser, I segued to intervening in person only if 1)I saw the accident happen so I was confident it wasn't a mugging scam or a drunk or 2)somebody else intervened first and nothing bad happened to them so I could be confident this was a legit injury- this type of response was seen in the video too.Also, somebody who is well dressed is more likely to be quickly helped because muggers tend not to wear business suits.

When a bunch of people just walk past, it gives the impression that the person lying on the ground is somebody who habitually lies on the ground rather than somebody who just had an injury. This is true even if the person is moaning, as the first actor was. It seemed as though something was wrong with his leg, as though he had fallen and broken his leg or twisted his ankle. But when somebody falls like that, the accident is witnessed by many people and they generally rush to help. I have seen people fall and they are always instantly helped and I have helped and I have been helped when I fell. So if a man is lying on the ground and clutching his leg and moaning it sends the message that nobody saw him fall and therefore he's scamming or high.

There are 2 holes in this logic because 1)it assumes that people do rush in when they witness an accident (although in my experience they actually do) and 2)it assumes there were would be witnesses to any accident (although in a big city there generally are). They said that the actor lay on the ground for 20 minutes before anybody intervened. This makes it pretty likely that people were walking past when he initially lay on the ground. Those first people would be witness to what looked like to their eyes a scam (and technically it was) and so would have walked past, thereby broadcasting to anybody who saw them walk past that this was a scam and they should stay away from the guy. This is a dynamic the narrator weirdly didn't discuss. How can they not know about it? They are in a city. Do they intervene with everybody they see on the ground? I bet they don't.

It is possible that the actor faked a fall and nobody intervened and also possible that nobody saw him lie on the ground. But people usually do intervene if they witness the accident and it is unlikely that such a busy spot had nobody walking past only 20 minutes before.

My response these days unless I witness the accident (in which case I intervene), is to walk past if the person looks obviously drunk or high and just keep going but if I am uncertain then I notify an official- security guard, cop, call 911). A couple times when I notified a security guard the guard told me the person came every day and did that and that was the end of it. Sometimes the security guard went to investigate. Always the cop did. (Cops always investigate). As a tourist in foreign countries I do not intervene in any way unless there is clear injury.

I agree, they would answer no when asked as individuals. But in practice (which is what counts), when other people are around, they obviously do exhibit the bystander effect, as this video demonstrates.

It can be sorted out logically: when people conform to a group, value that higher than their individuality and instead value high social status in that group, it means the weakest and worst off will be treated the worst, as portrayed in this video. I mean, how else could it be! We have to accept this consequence of herd-mentality as a simple logical fact.

It would be an interesting experiment, indeed. Autistics could walk past an injured person for other reasons - perhaps for having been mistreated throughout their lives, perhaps for not bothering, who knows. All I am saying is that what autistics have of deficits in that regard does not justify the well-known bystander effect seen in this video.

Except none of those people walked past an injured person. None of them. Not one. They walked past a person who was pretending to be injured. The implications of this are not explored by the research team but should have been.

But unless they knew this was an act (which they obviously didn't), how could anyone think someone willingly put themselves in the position the persons pretending to be injured put themselves in? Would there have to be blood on the shirt to make in convincing? An arm missing?

I discuss that very question in my post upthread. When I was much younger, I never thought that somebody would put themselves in that position intentionally. In my youthful attempts to help people who were just lying somewhere I generally found that they were drunk or high and the help they wanted from me was money. Once when I leaned in the guy tried to grab my purse. In that case he was neither drunk nor high (I don't think) but rather it was a deliberate scam. That was the end of me trying to help unless I saw the accident myself. Although I would alert security guards, cops or call 911 if I was unsure. There is a related scam whereby people deliberately cause a traffic accident and then when the other person gets out of their car they rob them. Faking helplessness or injury so that people will get near you and then you can rob them is a pretty standard scam.

But then there are the situations where a person is legit injured. Onviously you should help, right? Not so fast. It depends on what country you are in. Good Samaritan laws differ wildly from place to place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law

If you are in China, you can be penalized for helping: accused of causing the accident. This prevents people from helping even when they witness the accident themselves.

(all quotes are from the linked wiki of Good Samaritan laws around the world)

If you are in the U.S., as I am, you won't be accused of causing the injury and this increases the number of people who help when they witness the accident. Even so, in some jurisdictions you can be sued and are encouraged to get official help such as call 911. As I wrote upthread, I have often alerted security uards, cops or called 911 but didn't intervene in person.



the situation is a lot more prosocial in Israel



The wiki says "Europe" but that's too broad. A shame. How about the UK? The video lightly touched on international response by tresting in both NYC and London. But they didn't address how different laws affect the response.


Anybody who is wondering how they would react in such a situation merely needs to go to a big city to find out. It's hard to walk through a city without ever encountering somebody just lying there.

The show What Would You Do is really very good. It's a professionally staged event (actors are the ones taking the fall, acting, leaving a baby in the car, etc.), but no one's in on it except the people acting it out and authority figures (they let the police know, the head of the restaurant that they're in know, etc.). Everyone else wasn't told and so they think it's actually happening. There are some situations I wouldn't get involved in, even knowing that it's acted out, but the vast majority of them I would. There have been a couple where I know without a doubt that I would have eaten those people alive. However, my family and friends all see me as very confrontational and largely missing a filter, so that could certainly be a factor.