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The Moral And Legal Obligations Of Bystanders To A Vulnerable ... Form

so let's talk about the bystander effect for a minute this is one of the most frequently discussed psychological phenomena many of you have read about it in psychology textbooks heard about it in a psychology 101 lecture or seen videos where this is described and demonstrated the fundamental idea behind the bystander effect is as follows when you are in a larger crowd you're less likely to receive aid and assistance now the very presence of that idea makes some people nervous makes them nervous to visit big cities makes them nervous to be among others and worried that when they are together in a crowd a parade a march that maybe they're somehow in danger where did this idea come from March 13th 1964 a tragedy in Queens New York kitty Genovese II was murdered outside her apartment it was late but there were certainly people awake and she was screaming while she was attacked two weeks later the New York Times ran an article saying that 37 who saw the murder did not call the police 37 the number was later adjusted to 38 the idea that someone could be murdered and people would stand idly by became something that social psychologists were very concerned about and they began research I'd like to talk to you about one of the most seminal studies in this space this laboratory or one that looks very much like it is where in 1968 John Darley and bible-- Adonai took subjects put headphones on them and put them in a room and asked them to listen to other people they were made to feel that they were either alone or with two other people or with five other people then they did something which I think was very traumatic the 60s were the good days for social psychology when you could do terrible things to people in the service of science what they did to these experimental subjects was had them listen to someone describing the symptoms of a stroke and then calling out for help what they were interested in was would the individual with headphones on alone in a room yell out for help or bang on the door open the door break the bounds of the experiment and say this person needs help and I want to do it can we share the results of that study with you in a six minute period following the onset of the individual describing stroke symptoms when a person was made to feel alone that they were the only one hearing over 80% helped within a six minute time window when they thought there were more people present that was reduced to over 60% in the belief that there were five other people present less than half did anything they also looked at the time to help and we see a very similar effect the pattern looks different but as I'll explain the idea is simple when you're alone you're more quick to help if you do provide help you see the average time to provide assistance was less than a minute 50 seconds but with two people present that time went up and with five people present almost three minutes on average before someone helped this was described at the time as being a result of diffusion of responsibility that in the presence of other people we don't feel a responsibility to step up to intervene to help in the years since then there have been many replications and studies using different types of activities using different types of emergencies if you go online you can find any number of videos expose even student projects where a student will lay face down on the floor in high school hallway and people seemed to walk right by in this video you see a gentleman crouched down saying I need help I'm in pain and people walk by this is the bystander effect here's the but social psychology does a fantastic job of letting us know when things might happen and if they are indeed at all possible but going back actually to that first scenario in 1964 kitty Genovese see we actually find Rachel Manning and her colleagues that the story wasn't as clean as people think when Manning and her colleagues reviewed the police records when they looked at what really happened that night using court documents they discovered that the New York Times actually surprisingly perhaps for some of us others may be mislead us there actually were people who called the police there were people who screamed and yelled out their window this was not the story of the big city run amok and people not caring that some thought it was a few years later Peter Fisher and his colleagues did a meta analytic synthesis this is a combination of all the published research on the bystander effect and they concluded that the presence of bystanders does reduce helping responses so it is a real phenomenon but when you dig into the data when you dig into studies you realize that the picture is not as bleak nowhere near as bleak as conventionally assumed and in fact there is one little thing that makes a huge difference let me share some of the results in this particular study they cumulated across multiple studies and were able to give you an estimate of how big is the effect how big is the effect of when more people are present you don't help and the large negative effect you see here occurred across multiple studies when there were bystanders present who were instructed to be passive this is in fact what happened in the Darlie and Latin I study where the individual who was there as an experimenter told the others who were bystanders not to say anything so there was considerable amount of uncertainty for the experimental participant there are other people how come they're not speaking up when there is a passive bystander this effect does occur what happens when you instruct one person one person to be active and step up the results are completely reversed we go from having a bystander effect where people are less likely to help to having what could be called a helper effect where in the presence of more people as long as one person one person actively helps people are more likely to jump to be in a position to aid further people become more likely to help this data suggests that it can't be diffusion of responsibility as the primary explanation for the bystander effect if that's the case then when one person helps you're absolved of responsibility you should walk away instead the explanation is one of uncertainty when no one helps we wonder is that the right thing to do to stand by to be passive to let this thing this tragedy happen when one person helps we jump in we're there we're ready we actually join with others to help make a difference there's additional research that says in particular if you go beyond one person and you get a small group of people a small group of people who act amongst a sea of others and they engage in a particular behavior whether it's gazing up at a particular window or doing a dance others are more likely to act and do the same this is quite different than the bystander effect in fact it's effectively the opposite so armed with a more realistic and more current understanding of the bystander effects there are two things that you can do with this knowledge and let me begin with the most basic although maybe this is the most important for you and that's as follows what do you do if you're in a crowd and you need help Bob Chiellini who is a former professor at Arizona State University who has a best-selling book on power and influence does a really nice job of giving very specific advice here and it's advice that I think you can use it's an idea that is certainly worth spreading when you need help your job is not to get anyone to help your job is to get one person to help and if you can get one person to help other people will follow now how do you do that if you're an audience and you know someone's name you can call that person out in another situation you may not know and you may literally have to find a way to single someone out so for example in an audience like this it would be very difficult I think to convince someone to come up and be on camera and be on stage but if I said I need help and I pointed and I said ma'am you have white jacket on the sides with pattern I need you to come I need your help please I see your shoes with the white laces come on please come right here I need your help actually I just need you to flip my slide so hold those if you can and then when you're ready I'll tell you and you will flip by pushing that button are you happy to be up here yes she says I'm super happy if you want help and you can go ahead and put the button to afford perfect now you know how to get help in a crowd all you need is one person we're at a call someone else up now people would be more willing and likely to come so we can use this in all aspects of our life we can use it to get help in a crowd we can use it to get help as a volunteer if you're running an office and you need someone to volunteer don't just ask anyone get one person and then other people will follow so that's the first piece of advice the first idea we're spreading with your new knowledge of the bystander effect it says that all you really need one person and others will follow next life Margaret Mead who is perhaps the United States most famous cultural anthropologist said never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world I remember the first time I heard this quote it made me really tired because I imagine small groups of people working late at night trying to change the world that's a lot of work for small groups of people to do whether you're building bridges in Peru whether you're working with your pastor and a small group of committed citizens within your church to help a hurting community it's a lot for a small group of people to do but if we take what we know about the bystander effect seriously now I think we understand the idea that it's not really about that small group getting everything done it's about that small group becoming the catalyst for others to follow you can click to the next slide if we think about what happened in the 60s with Martin Luther King we have a tendency to elevate the Reverend Martin Luther King and say look what he did and the reality is that he did not do it alone he had groups of people that he locked hands with and arms with and they marched together and when they marched others followed he turned the next slide more recently we've seen in Tunisia and the revolution that's perhaps the most successful example of an Arab Spring revolution where we now have a budding democracy not one person but small groups of use young people like the college students in this room who came together and decided that they would go to the streets and they would protest against their government and when small groups of young people went to the streets others followed there was a movement born from the commitment of small groups of people and they were there others to follow I remember in my own life thinking a little bit about how nervous how uncertain we are to reach out and help I was in an airport once and the guy next to me had fallen asleep he looked far different than me in so many ways he was wearing ratty jeans and he was unshaven and I was in my suit we were sitting next to each other and he had fallen asleep hard he was out and our plane was boarding our plane was boarding and I assumed he would wake up and I kept hoping he would wake up and for me this was not diffusion of responsibility I felt some sense of obligation responsibility but there was massive uncertainty massive uncertainty in my case do I wake him up and maybe make him mad what if this is not his flight I started to walk away I stopped and I turned and I decided that I needed to face the uncertainty and I needed to do something and as silly as it sounds I was nervous and I reached out and I touched his shoulder I said sir sir the planes getting ready to leave and he opened his eyes and I was still uncertain that I was nervous and he looked up at me and he said thank you so much I was on a spiritual retreat and I was up all night praying and I just couldn't stay awake and we boarded the flight together shoulder to shoulder and I thought this was just one of those little things but I was afraid I was uncertain how many other times are we uncertain are we afraid for things that are more important more worrisome more troubling than tapping someone on the shoulder I committed that day to think I need to stop sitting in uncertainty and I need to do something and knowing that the gentleman that I woke up that day had been praying for 24 hours and I did him a good favor I think I've got some some in now with God that I'll use as best I can over the next few weeks I have a question for you and I'm going to end on this you can go ahead and click now that you know that the bystander effect is not what is in your text books now that you know that you're not in danger in a crowd or that a parade or a March is a place where who knows what's going to happen now that you know that other people will follow if you get a group of people who are committed excited and work hard I want to know where are you going to lead others to change the world to do service what are you going to do to make a difference thank you