Polygamist Marriage: Video Analysis

The video I chose is about a girl being forced into a polygamist marriage. In the video, the Jones, go to dinner at a family restaurant outside of Colorado City. The family consists of Frank and his three wives Sherry, Laura, Cathy, and a 15 year old named Susan. This video illustrates the bystander effect because the Jones family is placed in an environment where people could intervene. Susan is crying and is told to stop because it is her time to become a wife. Susan keeps saying how she is too young and that she isn’t ready to be a wife, this starts to create a bigger scene. Throughout the video you see many guests just watching this. This setting was recorded for two days, and more than 100 diners witnessed the video and only four intervened,

Many viewers could have not joined in to help Susan because of the group or her family, and seeing that the older man was there could have discouraged many people from trying to help out because he is viewed as an authoritative figure. Susan could have not been provided help because of the stereotype that people could have had for the family such as the dress and style that the family was in at the restaurant would allow the other diners to make the assumption that the family is Mormon. Even though polygamy is illegal in the United States, Mormons do still practice it. This same idea could have made the diners prejudice as well, by not wanting to interfere because of the ideas that they have of Mormon faith and practices, the diners could have felt as though that was their faith and although they think it is wrong, it might not be their place to step

In the article, would increase or decrease bystander behavior. Four studies were conducted, “participants were asked to imagine that they were walking down the street, then asked to imagine one or five other people walking on the same street. These others were described as strangers, friends, or students. Having imagined the presence of others, they were asked to imagine encountering an incident between a man and a woman that rapidly escalates into a violent attack by the man on the women. Participants were then asked how likely they would be to do nothing/remain uninvolved, to intervene directly (by calling the police, e.g.), or to intervene directly themselves.” In the study the group (Levine) was imagined as strangers, then the greater the group size, the less participants were willing to get involved or to intervene directly. This action can be proved by the video of the young girl Susan. In the first few minutes hidden cameras show a diner clearly upset by what she is hearing and seeing, she and her husband do not interfere directly, the husbands finds a manager and asks to be moved to the other side of the restaurant. As well as another scenario with a diner who takes pictures of Susan with her family, when asked why he did it he said “to show to the pictures to the cops”. Both the couple and the man are acting indirectly. The article goes on to say, when