Spectator effect

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Under bystander effect (also bystander effect , english : bystander effect , even non-helping-bystander effect or Genovese syndrome ) refers to the phenomenon that some eyewitnesses engage an accident or criminal assault with decreasing likelihood or provide assistance if more viewers ( English bystander "Dabeistehender") are present or added.

The term Genovese Syndrome comes from the American Kitty Genovese , who was victim of an assassination attempt in 1964 on the way to her home in New York City , which lasted about half an hour and happened in various places. At least 38 people from the neighborhood are said to have noticed the murder and observed the attack without anyone coming to the young woman's aid. However, this assumption is based on a false report. Due to the layout of the building and the fact that each attack in Genovese's attempt to escape her attacker took place in a different location, no witness had been able to see the entire attack. Most only heard parts of the incident without realizing the seriousness of the situation, a few saw only a small portion of the initial assault, and there were no witnesses to see the eventual rape and attack in the outer hallway that led to Genovese's death . Nonetheless, Genovese's murder led psychologists John M. Darley of New York University and Bibb Latané of Columbia University to investigate the witnesses' failure to intervene. They identified sharing of responsibility and " pluralistic ignorance " as the main causes of behavior . The work of Darley and Latané motivated a number of further social psychological studies on prosocial behavior . Research into the reasons for failure to provide assistance also strongly emphasizes the importance of group processes and group dynamics .

Theories about the cause

  • The necessity or urgency of the assistance cannot be clearly assessed by the bystanders. People fail to provide assistance because they fear that they will be embarrassed if they intervene in a situation that is not threatening for the person (s) concerned.
  • With a larger number of bystanders, the willingness not to assess the situation as an emergency increases ( pluralistic ignorance ). The other bystanders apparently don't see an emergency either, because nobody else has intervened so far.
  • With a larger number of bystanders, there is a diffusion of responsibility : responsibility is shared based on the number of spectators with a simultaneous decrease in personal responsibility. It is waited for another person to intervene or to take the first step of an intervention.
  • According to the reactance theory, a person asked for help feels restricted in their freedom of choice by this request. In response, she will tend to refuse to help.

The 5-step process

To evaluate the effect of non-action of the eyewitnesses ( bystander ) to better understand developed Latané and Darley a decision model for helping behavior (model of bystander intervention ) . The model comprises five levels that determine the help behavior. Each and every one of them must be passed through successfully for a person to provide help. At levels 2, 3 and 5, the presence of other people can reduce the likelihood of assistance.

The table explains the five levels based on a situation where there is a risk of rape .

step obstacle Influences
1. Notice the event The event is not noticed Noise and Other Distractions
Focus on your own actions
2. Assess the situation as "action required" Failure to assess that the event poses a high risk Unclearness regarding the potential danger
inactivity of further witnesses ( pluralistic ignorance )
Ignoring signs of a criminal act
3. Take responsibility Failure to take personal responsibility Unclear responsibility ( diffusion of responsibility : probability increases with the number of people)
4. Decide how to help Failure to intervene due to a lack of ability Action Ignorance (not knowing what to say or do to intervene)
5. Help Failure to act Fear of the consequences
Assessment of whether intervening will aggravate the situation or self-endangering
Social norms contradict Intervention

Perceive the situation

Before assistance can be given, the person must first register an emergency. The perception can be prevented by temporal and spatial separation. The liveliness and nature of the emergency can also influence the possibility of perception. Resilient emergencies have been shown to help 89% of cases and non-animated emergencies only 13% of cases.

Another study shows that perception can also be influenced by one's own mood. McMillen, Sanders, and Solomon (1977) put participants in a good or bad mood by giving feedback on how well they did a task. During a further task, they then observed the test subjects' reactions to a sound of different volume. These observations show that people in a good mood react to a noise at just a few decibels and can therefore perceive an emergency much earlier. McMillen, Sanders and Salomon also carried out the study in a modified form. The condition, whether good or bad mood, is established as in study 1. In the second round, the willingness to help was observed. Here, too, it can be seen that people in a good mood are more likely to help without being asked.

Darley and Batson (1973) put an apparently injured person by the side of the street and observed the helping behavior of theology students attending a seminary. Even if they had to give a lecture on the topic of “The Good Samaritan” in the seminar, time pressure had a much greater influence on the behavior in helping. Of the students who were pressed for time, only 4% helped the “victim”; 63% of those who were under no time pressure.

Interpret the situation

After the situation has been perceived, it must also be interpreted as an emergency. Only then can the person go through the next stages. This mostly depends on the situation. If an emergency is clear, like a car accident , it can be more easily interpreted as an emergency. Another study by Latané and Darley (1970) tries to uncover to what extent people in an unclear situation can be influenced by the actions of other people (so-called informative social influence ). The so-called smoke study investigated how the subjects respond to smoke entering through a crack in the door into the room. The people are assigned to different conditions. They either sit alone in the room, with two other participants or two straw men . In the first condition, 75% report the smoke, in the second condition only 38%. However, in the last condition, in which two straw men are present who ignore the smoke, only 10% of the test subjects report the smoke. These observations give an idea of ​​how much the behavior of others influences your own behavior. This phenomenon, that people conclude from the non-action of other bystander , that it is not an emergency, is called pluralistic ignorance .

To take responsibility

Once the emergency situation has been identified, the bystander must take personal responsibility in order to intervene. Often people avoid believing that others are better qualified. The sense of responsibility usually decreases the higher the number of spectators. This phenomenon is also called responsibility diffusion . Moriarty (1975) showed this effect in his study. He investigated people's sense of responsibility on a beach. In one of the test conditions, the beach visitors were asked to explicitly take care of things, and in the control group, attention was only drawn to the fact that the straw man was leaving his towel. Then, in both conditions, another straw man stole a radio from the unattended towel. The results show that people feel more responsible when they are personally given responsibility, because under this condition around 94% help and in the other only 20%.

Deciding what help is needed

Even if after the first three steps it is clear that you want to help, people often don't know how. The decision which help is needed depends on the competence and experience. Shotland and Heinold (1985) showed in their study that people who have taken a first aid course can help much more efficiently. Also, the shock can cause a person can not decide what to do. A study by Clark & ​​Word (1974) also showed that knowledge or competence have an influence on the effectiveness of helping behavior. They allegedly administered an electric shock to a person in the presence of the subject by touching an electric wire rope. People with little or no knowledge of electricity usually ran impulsively to the victim and touched it. However, this behavior does not help the victim at all, but puts the helper in the same danger and can possibly lead to death.

Perform help

Often, before witnesses provide assistance, they weigh the potential cost of providing assistance. Many people are afraid of making themselves liable to prosecution. Sometimes the witness has to put himself in danger. But shame or the fear of doing something wrong can also be reasons why people do not help. A person's fear of making a bad impression in front of others (increases with the number of people present) is called audience-inhibition .

Urban overload hypothesis

definition

People who live in cities are bombarded by stimuli, taking to a overload to avoid (overload stimuli), tend to remain on its own.

Stanley Milgram (1970)

Milgram assumes that the place where a person is is crucial to their behavior. The so-called urban overload means that people concentrate more on themselves so that they can find their way around big cities . However, this protective behavior has a negative effect on coexistence in the big city. In this case, people restrict helping behavior or the interest in their fellow human beings, but not out of bad intent, but for self-protection. Milgram suspects, however, that this behavior is only limited to the place where you are. A person from the big city will also be more helpful in a small town , just as someone visiting a big city will behave according to the urban overload hypothesis.

Study by Amato

In a study by PR Amato (1983) it was shown how different the help behavior between city dwellers and small town dwellers is towards a man who has fallen on the street. It turns out that in the small towns over 50% of the witnesses helped and in the big city only 15%. Unlike Milgram, Amato attributes this difference to personality formation. He does not believe that the place where a person is is decisive, but the place where he grew up. In rural areas, the development of an altruistic personality is encouraged and the networks are more familiar and not so anonymous. Amato blames this bond and personality for the results of his study.

Overview study by Nancy Steblay (1987)

In situations where help is needed, what matters is where the incident takes place, not which people are present.

Field Studies by Robert Levine (1994)

Population density correlates more with helping behavior than the number of inhabitants .

Critique of the effect

In 2019, an investigation was published based on 219 recordings from public cameras, which showed that victims of violence and aggression were helped in 91% of the cases observed.

See also

literature

  • Aronson et al. (2004) - Chap. 11 (pp. 422–428) Chapter 3: The Context (pp. 65–85)

Web links

Commons : Onlookers  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Archive link ( Memento of the original from May 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Original article by Latané and Darley (pdf)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / psych.princeton.edu
  2. Robert Cialdini: The psychology of persuasion . 2008, ISBN 978-3-456-84478-7 , pp. 133 (English: Influence. The Psychology of Persuasion . Quote: "[…] everyone is likely to see everyone else looking unruffled and failing to act. As a result, and by the principle of social proof, the event will be roundly interpreted as a nonemergency. ").
  3. Latané, B., & Darley, JM (1970). The Unresponsive Bystander: Why Doesn't He Help ?, Century Psychology Series . New York: Appleton-Century Crofts.
  4. ^ Darley & Batson (1973). From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, pp. 100-108
  5. NM Steblay (1987). Helping behavior in rural and urban environments: A meta-analysis . Psychological Bulletin, 102, pp. 346-356
  6. ^ RV Levine et al. (1994). Helping in 36 US cities . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, pp. 69-82
  7. Bystander Effect Debunked - In 91% Of Real World Cases Someone Helps. Accessed June 28, 2019
  8. Philpot, R., Liebst, LS, Levine, M., Bernasco, W., & Lindegaard, MR (2020). Would I be helped? Cross-national CCTV footage shows that intervention is the norm in public conflicts. American Psychologist, 75 (1), 66-75. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000469 . Retrieved August 25, 2020.