By DANIELLE GIANNANDREA
Staff Writer
The bystander effect is a really interesting concept, this effect takes place unconsciously. Psychology uncovers the real truth about this phenomenon. The bystander effect takes place when there is a greater amount of bystanders; people are less likely to assist someone in a distressing situation. If there are very few bystanders they are more likely to help someone in a bad situation.
The reason behind this phenomenon is that in a larger group of people it makes it to where not one single person has the responsibility to take action. However, the people not taking responsibility could simply take action and they could potentially save someone’s life.
Why does this affect take place? Psychology proves that when we are in a big group of people the responsibilities get washed out; the more people there are watching a tragic effect the less pressure we feel to take action. Could it be because we don’t see anyone else taking action so we believe that it is okay not to? Yes. As a bystander, if you do not know whether to help someone, but you do not see anyone else helping them then you end up thinking that the help is unnecessary.
Another reason why bystanders do not take action is that they may feel like they are bombarding the police with too many calls. People may believe that the many other people watching would have called the police about the event, which prevents them from calling the police because they feel that they will be bugging the police.
If you are ever in a situation where someone is in harm’s way and you are in a big group of people watching it take place there are a few ways to avoid the bystander effect from occurring. One way to prevent this occurrence would be to simply educate yourself on this effect. If you already know how this effect works then you would be prepared for one of these situations and know that you need to take action no matter how many people there are around you. Another way that you could prevent this effect would be to assign someone the responsibility to get help. Let’s say that there was a stabbing taking place in front of you and 30 different people, no one would want to intervene with the stabber and no one would call for help because of the bystander effect. Now if you were in this situation you would want to look someone in the eye from the crowd and tell them to call for help so that way they know that they are personally responsible for taking action.
