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The Bystander Effect: A Brief Summary And Analysis

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In 1664 in New York Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death outside her apartment, there were 38 witnesses yet only one person even attempted to call the police (Argento,2015). Kitty is a vivid example of something that happens quite regularly, witnesses to crimes not getting in trouble for their lack of action. This led to a social experiment by social psychologists Bibb Latane and John Darley to attempt to figure out why “some people can see something bad happen right before their eyes but fail to act.”(Swain) They developed what is known as the bystander effect and has been described by The Daily Financial Times as being, “the greater the number of people present, the less likely people are to help a person in distress.” Right now in the …show more content…

Kendra Cherry says, “the presence of other people creates a diffusion of responsibility.”("Glimpses of the Genovese Effect.") If the bystander is alone they feel the sole responsibility to act but, but if there is a group of bystanders it is implied that the responsibility to act is shared. It is as if everybody thinks someone else is going to act in an emergency, so therefore no one ends up acting. Bibb Latane and John Darley in their experiment concluded that, “as the number of bystanders increased, so too did the likelihood that no one would help.” (Gettler, 2005) This is a natural phenomenon among humans so in order to encourage people to act there must be something that places the responsibility to act back on the individual even when there is a group of bystanders. One viable mechanism for placing the responsibility to act back on the individual could be a harsher duty to act law. Understanding the ability to overcome a diffusion of responsibility is the first step to solving the problem, although it is not the only reason a law would be

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The Kitty Genovese Murder and the Social Psychology of Helping the Parable of the 38 witnesses argue that the 38 witnesses who were inactive during the murder of Genovese cannot be supported by the evidence that was taken up. This story is about a victim, Kitty Genovese who was killed in plain sight of 38 neighbors who did nothing to help. This crime has challenged the discipline of social psychology and created a theory known as the bystander effect. The bystander effect is an idea that people do not intervene because they are affected by the presence of others. In her case, she was murdered and assaulted sexually early morning on March 13, 1964, in the district of Queens, New York.

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Some believe that bystanders are innocent, because they aren't the ones causing the pain. However they still witness what is going on around them, while watching others suffer. In “The Harvest Gypsies” John Steinbeck says, “The better dressed children shout and jeer, the teachers are quite often impatient”(John Sternbeck). This shows how just a little words and actions can affect people or add on to the problem. In “Killers of the Dream” Lillian Smith expresses, “Some learned to screen out all except the soft and the soothing; others denied even as they saw plainly and heard”(Lillian Smith).

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Every day many of us are faced with the question, “Should I step in and help?”. Some of us immediately think yes and jump in to help, while others believe it is better to keep walking. The bystander effect happens when a person does not stop and help because they think someone else will. In these situations, some people stand up and respond to the crisis, because they are not worried about what will happen to them, but what will happen to the person in crisis instead. In the novel Night and the poem “The Hangman”, the bystander effect took place because people were afraid to bring attention to themselves.

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In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, there are many instances demonstrating the bystander effect: a social psychological experience where an individual, usually placed in a group, is less motivated towards a goal to benefit

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Every day many of us are faced with the question, “Should I help?”. Some of us immediately think yes and jump in to help, while others believe it is better to keep walking. The bystander effect happens when a person does not stop and help because they think someone else will. In these situations, some people stand up and respond to the crisis, because they are not worried about what will happen to them but what will happen to the person in crisis. In the novel Night and the poem “The Hangman”, the bystander effect took place because people were afraid to bring attention to themselves.

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In “The Dying Girl That No One Helped,” there were a total of 38 people who confessed to being a witness of the accident. That is only the number of people who confessed, although many more may have been present. This shows that sometimes people rely on others to save the day, but never see what they can do themselves. A prime example of this is from an article I read online. A girl only 2 years of age was unfortunately struck and injured by two vans.

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Bystander behaviour can generally be described as the actions people take when they witness an emergency situation in a public place. There have been many studies on bystander behaviour, this essay will explore two approaches to explain this behaviour. It will look at the experimental method performed by Latané and Darley and at the discourse analysis done by Levine. First the essay will describe and outline the methods.after that it will examine the similarities as well as the contrast between those techniques. Latané and Darley did their research on bystander behaviour in the aftermath of the murder case of Catherine `Kitty´ Genovese,which happened in the Suburbs of New York in 1964.

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Ultimately, the shocking thing about these bystander cases is that so many people failed to respond. If only one or two had ignored the victim, we might be able to understand their inaction. But when thirty-eight people, or eleven people, or hundreds of people fail to help, we become disturbed. Actually, this fact that shocks us so much is itself the clue to understanding these cases. If each member of a group of bystanders is aware that other people are also present, he will be less likely to notice the emergency, less likely to decide that it is an emergency,and less likely to act even if he thinks there is an emergency.

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The bystander effect is defined as the effect in which one person feels unobligated to help a situation because there are other people around. An example of this is the movie is when the two black guys in the stolen vehicle hit a man and because the other is present they feel it is best for their sake to stand by and run away from the man they just hit. This behavior shown towards the man who was hit is discourteous and occurred because the two men did not feel inclined to help the man they hit because the other was present. Defensive attribution is the tendency to blame the victim for the crime and is another aspect of social psychology found in the film Crash. One example of this in the film is the same example as stated before; when the two black men hit the pedestrian with a vehicle they stole.

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The Bystander Effect: A Result of a Human Drive Repetitive cries and screams for help were heard in Kew Gardens, New York on the Friday night of March 13th in 1964. As the 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was approaching her doorstep, an attacker –Winston Moseley- came from behind and started to stab her repeatedly. Despite her loud calls for help, turning on the bedroom lights along the neighborhood is all what her calls were capable of. None of the thirty nearby neighbors wanted to go under the spotlight of answering the call of duty so it wasn’t before 20 minutes when the anonymous hero that lived next door decided to call the police. It was four years later when our victim’s story became the perfect example to explain the social psychological

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Both Latané and Darley 's use of the experimental method and Levine 's use of discourse analysis aim to gain insight as to why the bystander phenomenon occurs, and are interested in why humans seemingly go against their better nature and choose not to help others. (The Open University, 2015a) Latané and Darley 's(1970) cited in Byford, (2014, p.229) experiment consisted of a lab-controlled test and used their quantitative results in order to understand the bystander effect and concluded that people are significantly less likely to respond when in the “passive confederate condition” and most likely to respond when in the “alone condition.” Levine 's (1999) cited in Byford (2014, p.236) viewing of qualitative evidence meant that he was able to determine factors he felt led to the explanation of this effect, such as the examination of the Bulger case and others ' feeling as though they should not become involved in family matters. Both of these experiments were conducted in order to more clearly understand Bystander behaviour and the reasons

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Therefore it only takes one to actually stand up and speaks out, or get involved to make a change. Bystanders do not have the responsibility to get involved, yet they do have the opportunity. Some persons choose to run towards the problem instead of running away from it, for they possess that heroic quality to help others in time of trouble. “There will undoubtedly come a time when you are faced with a situation in which you can intervene and help stop a potentially dangerous situation - stopping someone from driving drunk, eliminating bullying behavior, or preventing a sexual assault from occurring.” (Samuel Merritt University)

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but in the big cities, if there are two or more person might feel only few responsible about the victim. The effect of bystanders is one of the factors that influence the decision to the person. psychologists that is a natural human reaction after the complex which they call the effect of bystanders. psychologists they have a theory about the bystanders they believed

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The bystander effect states that during an occurrence or a crisis, the more observers there are, the less

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This essay will make the case of being against government regulation of businesses and what affect it has on the business environment for example consumers. This essay will be split into different sections. The first section will be the argument against government regulations of businesses and the effect it has. The second section will then go on to describe how businesses are over-regulated, over-taxed and how regulations can cause unemployment/loss of jobs within the economy or in businesses. The next section will be a comparison with the argument in support of government regulations of businesses.

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