Preview

Bystander Effect Research Paper

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
615 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Bystander Effect Research Paper
The bystander effect, bystander effect is a social psychological that refers to cases where people do not offer help to someone who needs help in front of other people. Usually when a person sees someone in danger or someone that needs help, they try and avoid or stay away from the situation so they don’t get in the middle or get hurt. The more bystanders there are most likely the victim will be severely hurt or even killed (Wikipedia Contributors).
One late night, Catherine Genovese 28-years old was coming home from her job from her late night shift. As she was arriving home a man named Winston Mousley attacked her with a knife. She was stabbed, she, yelled but no one seemed to want to help her or call the police. The people said they did
…show more content…
People do not realize someone is in need of help or in danger until it is too late. The person might be severely hurt or injured. When faced with an emergency situation, knowing what to do greatly increase the likelihood that a person will take action. While you absolutely cannot be prepared for every possible event that might transpire, taking first aid classes and receiving CPR training could help you feel more competent and prepared to deal with potential emergencies. When faced with an emergency situation, knowing what to do greatly increase the possibility that a person will take action. People are also more likely to help others if they think that the person truly deserves it. In one classic study, participants were more likely to give money to a stranger if they believed that the individual's wallet had been stolen rather than that the person had simply spent all his money. This might explain why some people are more willing to give money to the homeless while others are not. Those who believe that homeless people are in their situation due to laziness or unwillingness to work are less likely to give money, while those who believe that these individuals are genuinely deserving of help are more likely to provide help (“How to Overcome the Bystander Effect”).
In conclusion, if a person is to intervene, they must first notice the event, they must interpret the situation as an emergency, and they must decide that it is their personal responsibility to act. At each

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Conversely, they acted in a careless and negligent way which cost the life of an individual. We live in a society that does not care to help one another in times of need. If the United States required bystanders to simply act in a situation, it could influence morality and basic human decency. Some would argue that they could be sued for providing aid to a victim. For example, an article by Carol J. Williams “Good Samaritans Get No Aid From High Court” explains how someone who is a Good Samaritan might be sued for their actions and states, “It was also thought to be the first ruling by the court that someone who intervened in an accident in good faith could be sued.”…

    • 459 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Bystander Effect is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when someone is less likely to help a victim when other people are around; the more people present, the less likely they are to help. The issue lies in the moral dilemma of whether someone should intervene or not. In an apparently unpopular opinion, compared to those 37 witnesses, intervention of saving someone's life is second nature. The 37 witnesses who succumbed to the Bystander Effect are disgraceful and remorseless.…

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 1964 Kitty Genovese was a 28 women, who was walking towards her apartment from work on a trepidation night. Genovese spot an unusual man going the exact same way she was. She got terrified and took a different route towards her apartment. A police box was the first thing Kitty went towards, she tried to dial. Therefore, it was too late the man grabbed her and stabbed her. She screamed. Lights turned on. Neighbors looked out, no one said or did anything. ¨Oh my god, he stabbed me!…

    • 443 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In an emergency or crisis, the more bystanders there are, the less likely it is that any of them will actually help. A lot of the times bystanders will assume there is nothing because nobody else seems concerned. Bystanders will notice the event, realize the emergency, assume responsibility, and know what to do or not and last but not least act. John M. Darley and Bibb Latane claim even if a person defines an event as an emergency, the presence of other bystanders may still make him less likely to intervene. Bystanders should help if there is a bad emergency or crisis that they have witnessed.…

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Bystander Effect

    • 372 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Bystander Effect states that the more people present during an emergency, the less likely any individual is to assist. Bystanders are most likely to only assist if there are little or no witnesses present around them. Also if…

    • 372 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this world today People are being bullied and people are getting hurt and people won’t intervene daily. We as a society need to be courteous to others in need of help,help all together.We don’t need a Good Samaritan law cause we all know it would be a flaw. In 1964 a mad story dropped upon New York City And a girl named Kitty Genovese was brutally murdered, she was stabbed repeatedly while 38 people were watching. There was a man that shouted out there window and said leave her alone. Two people afterward came out to aid Genovese, but it was too late. The bystander effect can hurt emotionally because the victim Only wants to help if they were alone because they don't want to stand out. The people around the victims are using Diffusion of…

    • 687 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Bystander Effect

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In 1964, Kitty Genovese was brutally attacked and left to die near her home in Queens, New York. Her death contributed to the social psychological phenomenon called the bystander effect. You would think that Media coverage following her murder spawned a nationwide debate about the disturbing apathy surrounding the events, leading to the construction of the social psychological phenomenon known as the bystander effect. The standard way of thinking about topic “The Killing of Genovese has it that ”The attention-grabbing headline was followed by an even more disconcerting description” For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law‐abiding citizens in Queens that watched a killer stalk and stab a woman. Although I should know better by now, I cannot help thinking that it was later determined that many of the so-called “facts” in Gansberg’s piece were exaggerations, in this version of Genovese’s murder made national headlines and the disturbing apathy surrounding the events sparked national debate about bystander…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this study, John M. Darley and Bibb Latane strive to discover the reasoning behind the bystander effect. Throughout the article they use a random sample of people and by manipulating the number of people present through each experiment, they see how people respond to crisis in larger numbers versus smaller numbers. They concluded that in order for a bystander to act in an emergency the bystander first must “notice that something is happening, interpret that the event is an emergency, and decide that they have person responsibility to help.” They tested their theories through a series of experiments. They first studied these factors by manipulating the number of participants in a “smoke-filled-room” study. Participants were told to fill out information packets in a room and the scientists sent smoke through the wall. In this study, researchers found that in most cases, the people were more likely to panic about the smoke when they were in smaller numbers as opposed to with a larger group of people. The reason is because if other people are present in the room and the others are not panicking, the individual becomes less likely to panic. The second test was participants were placed in a room to play a video game and they hear a girl in the following room fall off a chair and hurt herself. This experiment also concluded that when the participants were alone they were more likely to assist the lady in the room next door. When participants were in a room together they chose to not assist the woman because their was a shared responsibility between the two people instead of just on the individual. Overall, they concluded that the two major causes for the bystander effect is responsibility diffusion as well as the difficulty in determining the situation as an emergency.…

    • 581 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Bystander Effect

    • 1807 Words
    • 8 Pages

    A fascinating dimension of the bystander effect is the diffusion of responsibility. The general hypothesis that has been tested is: As the number of bystanders increases, it is less likely that any one onlooker will help (Darley and Latane, 1968). Social influence adds to this idea. Passive social influence from bystanders acts on the diffusion of responsibility and maximizes the bystander effect. Although pro-social behavior can be learned, because of social restraint exhibition of pro-social behavior in public is unlikely. Therefore, in emergencies, inert bystander behavior is often replicated and exhibited.…

    • 1807 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    I had always wondered why people wouldn’t help someone in need. For example, when a kid was bullied in a school, none of the students surrounding stepped in to lend a hand; when someone got assaulted on the streets and asked for help, people walked away pretending not seeing it; when there was a car accident, no one stopped and called the police. After the learning about the Bystander Effect, I realized that the examples above are the phenomenon that individuals are less likely to help a victim when some other people are present. One of the many explanations of the Bystander Effect is that we like following the group, in other words, we feel secure when conforming. The Bystander Effect is prevalent in today’s society, from school bullying…

    • 293 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bystander Effect Theory

    • 913 Words
    • 4 Pages

    A lost child is wandering around Times Square, whimpering and crying for her parents. All of a sudden, a man dashes up and snatches her, dragging her to his car. In the driver’s seat he brandishes a gun, warning everyone to not follow. Even though there were many people at the scene of the crime, no one did anything. They were afraid of what the man would do them, or maybe they just didn’t want to get involved, didn’t want to take responsibility, didn’t want to deal with the work needed. Many people suggest that bystanders stay uninvolved because of theories such as the bystander effect and the fact that bystanders simply don’t know what’s happening, that they are not aware of the problem. However, theories such as the bystander effect are…

    • 913 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Victim Assistance

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Victim Assistance When a person experiences a crisis they may require assistance. The person experiencing the crisis may look for that assistance from people who may have witness the crisis, or showed up after the crisis, but when assistance is still needed. People will respond to emergency situations in different way. Some may assist or call for assistance, and some may not respond or assist to the occurring emergency the manner in which people respond to situation can be influenced by many factors. Factors that are inclusive of relationships formed in infancy and social surroundings.…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Selfish or Selfless

    • 863 Words
    • 4 Pages

    On March 13, 1964, a young woman was murdered outside her residence in Queens, New York. Catherine (Kitty) Genovese was stalked and attacked on three separate occasions while thirty-eight eye witnesses, one of whom called the police, looked on. “If we had been called when he first attacked, the woman might not be dead,” said Assistant Chief Inspector Frederick M. Lussen. This incident drove investigators to research the psychological phenomenon now known as the bystander effect and the diffusion of responsibility. There are people who are exceptions to these socially unacceptable phenomenons, such as Wesley Autrey, who jumped in after a young man who had fallen onto New York City 's subway tracks just before a train screeched into the station. Some individuals choose to put themselves in harms way while others would rather not get involved as long as it does not affect them.…

    • 863 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Essay On Bystander Effect

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a real problem that refers to cases in which real people do not help a victim when other people are present. The probability of people helping is utterly related to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help. Several variables help to explain why the bystander effect occurs. These variables include: ambiguity, cohesiveness and diffusion of responsibility. Many tragedies could have been prevented or altered for the better if bystanders would have acted the right way. Here are some examples: a murder that could have been prevented, people being affected by weather or not he sees somebody else act, the decisiveness of a person and the guilt a person might acquire. (Wikipedia Contributors).…

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Bystander effect, or Bystander apathy, refers to the phenomenon in which the greater number of people present are less likely to help a person in distress. The less amount of people present, and or alone, will more likely feel responsible for helping one in distress. When an emergency situation occurs, observers are more likely to take action if there are few or no other witnesses. Bystander effect has been a problem for a long time. There have been many cases where this has been proven to be true. These variables include: ambiguity, cohesiveness and diffusion of responsibility. A person’s life could change within a blink of an eye. It is absolutely horrifying to be aware that people will not help a person in need if there are others…

    • 673 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics