The Bystander Effect: A Psychological Phenomenon

The skit above is a psychology cartoon which depicts the bystander effect. The image shows clearly information that these four people no matter their race, gender, or age difference, no one is acting to help this man who lying on the ground. Everyone saw this person but all of them just believe maybe someone else will go and attend to him, so they all leave. This kind of situation is called bystander effect.
Actually bystander effect is an example case under the topic of Prosocial Behavior (Kendra, n.d.). It indicated a extensive scope of actions that people behave as a person who kindly to help, share and collaboration with others (Kendra, n.d.). The bystander effect is a social psychological phenomenon illustrate even a person at the scene of the dangerous, he/she still not give a hand to the victim when there are other people present. The
term was from a real homicide case happened in March 13, 1964 New York City, United States. A lady named Kitty Genovese was got killed by Winston Moseley at 3:15 on the morning (Getlen, 2014). When Kitty Genovese get off her work late from bar, and after she parked her car, on the way to her apartment she was stabbed to death.
A news was describing a murder case which lasted about 35 minutes, the guy first attack her by knife but she was still conscious. She screams and ask for helped, a neighbor saw from beside building and shout to that man. At that moment, the guy hid in a corner but few minutes later he saw nobody came to helped her so he tried the second and third time to kill her. The original news was saying that finally someone called the police but it was too late. The main point is after police investigation, when case happened, there was about 38 people in the surrounding area. But only one person took action and called the police.
After this case, two social psychologists which are John Darley and Bibb Latané launched a series of experiments in 1968.
They denoted a thinking from human being was that when an emergency case happened in front, people realize this severity level and will kind of persuade self that someone will intervene for sure, so just stand by the victim. They believed the reason that no one took steps to help Kitty Genovese was a phenomenon which they called diffusion of responsibility. Diffusion of responsibility is indicted the phenomenon about the number of people in the group increased, the subject felt less personal or individual responsibility to take action. They implemented few experiments by putting two, three or six of people in a group then see how quickly the subjects will help during the seizure. The result shows that when two people see this kind of case happening they will respond 100% under a minute. If there are 3 people in a group, the chances they will report the emergency is around 85 percent, and the group of 6 people is even less then 60% and the average delay in responding is around four-minute (McGill,
n.d.).
In conclusion, this statement raises the question if this world is loosing the care and sympathy between human beings? It is not the case; people just do not stay out when this tragedy is happening. Although some news has pointed out the case of Kitty Genovese has some discrepancy with the real story but the bystander effect is still existing in our daily life. So people should always act as if you are the only person there. Because no one will know what will happen in the future, maybe someday you will need others help then this care is indispensable from public.