Humans are unique in their social cognition because they make decisions based on their representations of reality. When trying to understand why people react or do not react, you must look at “the state of the world and the mental states (i.e, intentions, beliefs, desire)” (Buttelmann & Buttelmann, 2016, p. 127). This is crucial in understanding the social phenomenon known as the “bystander effect.” This phenomenon refers to “an individual’s likelihood of helping decreases when passive bystanders are present in a situation” (Fisher & Krueger, Greitemeyer, Vogrincic, Kastenmuller, Frey, Henne, Wicher & Kainbacher, 2011, p. 517). The notion that someone else will step often contradicts itself because the presence …show more content…
For example, secondary boys are less engaged and passive in their response compared to girls. As wells as, girls will intervene less likely as grade levels increase but will more likely help than boys. (Cowie, 2014, p. 28). This is something we took into consideration in our study because we will only use the typical college age students versus the whole population. The author, also points out, that as students age there is a shift from direct intervention (i.e., physically standing in between victim and bully) to indirect interventions (i.e., distracting the bully by changing the topic). This kind of shift shows us that educators, parents and adults need to emphasis the importance of direct intervention. As well as, from individual interventions to group interventions (Cowie, 2014). We must also look at the severity of situation because this plays into a person’s mind when contemplating whether to be involved or not. In a meta-analysis on bystander effect, the researchers noted that in extreme situation the bystander effect disappears and people get involved then a lesser extreme situation or an ambiguous situation (Fisher et al., 2011, 518).
The key importance of overcoming bystander effect is to empower students and make sure they know that they are not worthless. When students are able to recognize inequality, and have been taught to be “upstanders”, an individual who makes …show more content…
The results indicated that there was no significant main effect for the number of confederates, F(1,32) = 0.287 p>.05, partial η2 = .01, with those having one confederates (M =1.76, SD = 1.83) reporting more help than four confederates (M = 1.38, SD = 2.02). There was also no significant main effect for the droppers’ gender, F(1,32) = 0.083, p > .05, partial η2 = .003, with those having a male dropper (M = 1.67, SD = 2) reporting more than a woman dropper (M = 1.47, SD = 1.86). There was also no significant interaction between dropper’s gender and number of confederates, F(1,32) = 0.097, p > .05, partial η2 = .003.
The chi-square test of independence showed there was no significant relationship between dropper’s gender and help time, χ2 (1, N = 32) = .000a, p > .05, Cramer’s V = .000. Given the gender of the dropper, female or male, 50% of the time the dropper got helped.
The second chi-square of independence showed there was no significant relationship between number of confederate present and help time, χ2 (1, N = 32) = 2.000, p > .05, Cramer’s V = .250. Given the choice of having one or four confederate’s present, 62.5% were likely to help with only one confederate present and 37.5% were likely to help with only four confederates.