Bystander Effect

Bystander effect indicates that the larger amount of bystanders the less likely any one bystander offer help, while people help others more when they are alone. The failure of the bystanders’ helping has lead more tragic events happen today. Several things are correlated with the bystander effect. Some example included the diffusion of responsibility, the majority of bystanders’responces, the ability of helping and the public self-awareness, etc (Darley & Latané, 1968a; Latané & Darley, 1968b; Rutkowski, Cruder and Romer, 1983; van Bommel, van Prooijen, Elffers and van Langea, 2012). The following four literature reviews attempt to demonstrate about the bystander effect.
Darley and Latané (1968a) examined the diffusion of responsibility occur

The important question of whether young children take responsibility into account when deciding whether to help also cannot be neglected. Plötner, Over, Carpenter, and Tomasello (2015) investigated whether young children’s tendency to help can be reduced by the presence of bystanders in an experiment. An additional aim was to observe and investigate the main processes underlying the bystander effect such as the social referencing, shyness to act in front of others and diffusion of responsibility. Plötner et.al carried out the experiment in three different conditions which are alone condition, the bystander condition, and the bystander-unavailable condition. Children were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions. The children were asked to colour in the testing room. A total of 12 children were bystanders in the bystander and the bystander unavailable conditions and were always strangers to the participant. In the bystander and bystander-unavailable conditions, participants met the two confederates in front of the testing room and all the bystanders were equally visible. In bystander-unavailable condition, experimenter attached the cardboard wall to the barriers separating the two tables on the right, such that the two confederates were fenced in and unable to leave their compartments. The only difference

Most research articles may have focus too much on the negative aspects of bystander effect, more research is need to explore the positive effects of the presence of bystanders. Van Bommel, van Prooijen, Elffers and van Langea (2012) carried out two experiments to examine the increase of public self awareness throught the use of accountability cues such as camere will reverse the bystander effect, which mean the presence of bystander can increase the helping. The presence of bystanders provide an opportunity to promote reputation through helping. The participants read the message that soliciting support such as a personwant to commit suicide in an online forum in an alone conditon and bystander presence condition respectively for both studies.The participant were told that they did not have to respond to message, but were free to do so. In the first study, van Bommel et.al making the participants’ screen name more salient, displayed the names in red while other information displayed in black to introduce an accountability cue. The purpose of this study was to investigate if people would increase helping in the presence of bystander than alone when introducing a accountability cue. The number of responces paricipants typed in the textbox was measured. Van Bommel et.al found that the classic bystander effect happen in the non-salient condition. The partipants in the