Thanks to everyone's comments surrounding my blog on "bystander effect." It is a very prominent and real phenomena within our society. While studying social psychology in college a friend and I investigated the bystander effect using the common scenario of a broken down car with a driver of different ages and both genders. It was interesting to discuss and also frightening to realise the many associating factors that contribute to someone's initiative to help another person. Within society today, and rising crime rates it is a relatively normal reaction to double guess the realness of a situation. This complicates things and makes the ultimate decision a whole lot harder. I think this phenomena is very real and obvious and mostly likely will continue to exist. On a different note the blog by Bec is a very extreme case of bystander effect and produced a very real emotional response in me and I would imagine in many other people. Understanding and having awareness of this psychological factor is important and hopefully with conscious awareness individuals may help to overcome the bystander effect.
Thanks.
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Hey Zoe,
I agree with you that when people think of the bystander effect, they primarily think of the instances of:
-someone's car which has broken down
-a person who lying in the street who you assume is just sleeping or even drunk (esp in civic at night)
The stories of Kitty and James i feel show what can happen when a large collection of people fail to act. One such comment made by one onlooker of the Kitty murder was, he was tired so he went back to sleep. These stories arouse disgust and therefore, i hope this will compel people to look at their own actions and change their behaviour.
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