The Helping Mind Have you ever been in a situation where you thought help might be needed, but decided not to intervene because someone had probably already helped, and you wouldn’t want to interfere or be embarrassed if the situation was not what it seemed? There was a similar situation in New York in 1964 when Kitty Genovese was brutally attacked outside her apartment complex. Her assailant continued to stab her for 35 minute, during which she was screaming and calling for help. Although 38 people witnessed the attack, nobody called the police until it was too late. The police arrived two minutes after being called, but Genovese was already dead. Why did nobody call the police sooner?
Experimental Procedures Social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané decided to dig deeper into why nobody had taken action sooner. They hypothesized that bystander intervention, or the behavior of helping in an emergency, decreases as the number of witnesses increases. They called this
the diffusion of responsibility. To test their theory, they told groups of college students that they would be studying how they had adjusted to university life. They asked the students to discuss their problems with other students in separate rooms over an intercom system. The students in Group 1 were told they would only be talking to one other student, Group 2 was told they would be talking to two other students, and Group 3 was told there would be five other students on the line. However, each student actually was alone and would be talking to a prerecorded tape. To create a controlled emergency, the pre-recorded tape included a student having a realistically acted seizure. Darley and Latané measured the reaction time and percentage of students who helped in each group.
The Findings Darley and Latané found that in Group 1 the average amount of time it took to respond to the seizure was less than one minute, whereas in Group 3 it was around three minutes. All of the subjects in Group 1
reported the seizure, but only 85% in Group 2 and 60% in Group 3 reported. Their findings strongly supported their idea that the more people are around in an emergency, the less likely someone is to help.
Darley and Latané believed this was because in the larger groups, the subjects felt less individual responsibility and believed that someone else would help. Similarly, if one is in a smaller group and does not help in a situation, there will be more shame or guilt because the individual the reactions of others can also greatly affect how you personally react.
Significance The bottom line of this research is that it brings awareness to the bystander effect and will hopefully be able to increase bystander intervention. If you are ever in an emergency situation, you should act as if you are the only person there and refrain from assuming someone else has helped. After all, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.