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The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological theory that states that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim in the presence of other people. The theory was first proposed in 1964 after the murder of Kitty Genovese, in which a newspaper had reported (albeit somewhat erroneously) that 37 bystanders saw or heard the attack without coming to her assistance or calling the police. Much research, mostly in psychology research laboratories, has focused on increasingly varied factors, such as the number of bystanders, ambiguity, group cohesiveness, and diffusion of responsibility that reinforces mutual denial. If a single individual is asked to complete a task alone, the sense of responsibility will be strong, and there will be a positive response; however, if a group is required to complete a task together, each individual in the group will have a weak sense of responsibility, and will often shrink back in the face of difficulties or responsibilities.
Recent research has focused on "real world" events captured on security cameras, and the coherency and robustness of the effect has come under question. More recent studies also show that this effect can generalize to workplace settings, where subordinates often refrain from informing managers regarding ideas, concerns, and opinions.
Philpot et al. (2019) examined over 200 sets of real-life surveillance video recordings from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and South Africa to answer "the most pressing question for actual public victims": whether help would be forthcoming at all. They found that intervention was the norm, and in over 90% of conflicts one or more bystanders intervened to provide help. Increased bystander presence increased the likelihood that someone would intervene.
According to Latané and Darley, there are five characteristics of emergencies that affect bystanders:
Due to these five characteristics, bystanders go through cognitive and behavioural processes:
Notice: To test the concept of "noticing", Latane and Darley (1968) staged an emergency using Columbia University students. The students were placed in a room—either alone, with two strangers or with three strangers to complete a questionnaire while they waited for the experimenter to return. While they were completing the questionnaire, smoke was pumped into the room through a wall vent to simulate an emergency. When students were working alone they noticed the smoke almost immediately (within 5 seconds). However, students that were working in groups took longer (up to 20 seconds) to notice the smoke. Latané and Darley claimed this phenomenon could be explained by the social norm of what is considered polite etiquette in public. In most western cultures, politeness dictates that it is inappropriate to idly look around. This may indicate that a person is nosy or rude. As a result, passers-by are more likely to be keeping their attention to themselves when around large groups than when alone. People who are alone are more likely to be conscious of their surroundings and therefore more likely to notice a person in need of assistance.
Interpret: Once a situation has been noticed, a bystander may be encouraged to intervene if they interpret the incident as an emergency. According to the principle of social influence, bystanders monitor the reactions of other people in an emergency situation to see if others think that it is necessary to intervene. If it is determined that others are not reacting to the situation, bystanders will interpret the situation as not an emergency and will not intervene. This is an example of pluralistic ignorance or social proof. Referring to the smoke experiment, even though students in the groups had clearly noticed the smoke which had become so thick that it was obscuring their vision, irritating their eyes or causing them to cough, they were still unlikely to report it. Only one participant in the group condition reported the smoke within the first four minutes, and by the end of the experiment, no-one from five of eight groups had reported the smoke at all. In the groups that did not report the smoke, the interpretations of its cause, and the likelihood that it was genuinely threatening was also less serious, with no-one suggesting fire as a possible cause, but some preferring less serious explanations, such as the air-conditioner was leaking. Similarly, interpretations of the context played an important role in people's reactions to a man and woman fighting in the street. When the woman yelled, "Get away from me; I don't know you," bystanders intervened 65 percent of the time, but only 19 percent of the time when the woman yelled, "Get away from me; I don't know why I ever married you."
General bystander effect research was mainly conducted in the context of non-dangerous, non-violent emergencies. A study (2006) tested bystander effect in emergency situations to see if they would get the same results from other studies testing non-emergencies. In situations with low potential danger, significantly more help was given when the person was alone than when they were around another person. However, in situations with high potential danger, participants confronted with an emergency alone or in the presence of another person were similarly likely to help the victim. This suggests that in situations of greater seriousness, it is more likely that people will interpret the situation as one in which help is needed and will be more likely to intervene.
Degree of responsibility: Darley and Latané determined that the degree of responsibility a bystander feels is dependent on three things:
Forms of assistance: There are two categories of assistance as defined by Latané and Darley:
Implementation: After going through steps 1–4, the bystander must implement the action of choice.
In one study done by Abraham S. Ross, the effects of increased responsibility on bystander intervention were studied by increasing the presence of children. This study was based on the reaction of 36 male undergraduates presented with emergency situations. The prediction was that the intervention would be at its peak due to presence of children around those 36 male undergraduate participants. This was experimented and showed that the prediction was not supported, and was concluded as "the type of study did not result in significant differences in intervention."
A meta-analysis (2011) of the bystander effect reported that "The bystander effect was attenuated when situations were perceived as dangerous (compared with non-dangerous), perpetrators were present (compared with non-present), and the costs of intervention were physical (compared with non-physical). This pattern of findings is consistent with the arousal-cost-reward model, which proposes that dangerous emergencies are recognized faster and more clearly as real emergencies, thereby inducing higher levels of arousal and hence more helping." They also "identified situations where bystanders provide welcome physical support for the potentially intervening individual and thus reduce the bystander effect, such as when the bystanders were exclusively male, when they were naive rather than passive confederates or only virtually present persons, and when the bystanders were not strangers."
An alternative explanation has been proposed by Stanley Milgram, who hypothesized that the bystanders' callous behavior was caused by the strategies they had adopted in daily life to cope with information overload. This idea has been supported to varying degrees by empirical research.Christensen, K. & Levinson, D. (2003). Encyclopedia of community: From the village to the virtual world, Band 1, p. 662.
Timothy Hart and Ternace Miethe used data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and found that a bystander was present in 65 percent of the violent in the data. Their presence was most common in cases of physical assaults (68%), which accounted for the majority of these violent victimizations and less likely in robberies (49%) and sexual assaults (28%). The actions of bystanders were most frequently judged by victims as "neither helping nor hurting" (48%), followed by "helping" (37%), "hurting" (10%), and "both helping and hurting" (3%). Half of the attacks in which a bystander was present occurred in the evening, where the victim and bystander were strangers.
Latané and Rodin (1969) suggested that in ambiguous situations, bystanders may look to one another for guidance, and misinterpret others' lack of initial response as a lack of concern. This causes each bystander to decide that the situation is not serious.
Altruism research suggests that helping behaviour is more likely when there are similarities between the helper and the person being helped. Recent research has considered the role of similarity, and more specifically, shared group membership, in encouraging bystander intervention. In one experiment (2005), researchers found that bystanders were more likely to help an injured person if that person was wearing a football jersey of a team the bystander liked as opposed to a team the bystander did not like. However, when their shared identity as football fans was made salient, supporters of both teams were likely to be helped, significantly more so than a person wearing a plain shirt.
The findings of Mark Levine and Simon Crowther (2008) illustrated that increasing group size inhibited intervention in a street violence scenario when bystanders were strangers, but encouraged intervention when bystanders were friends. They also found that when gender identity is salient, group size encouraged intervention when bystanders and victims shared social category membership. In addition, group size interacted with context-specific norms that both inhibit and encourage helping. The bystander effect is not a generic consequence of increasing group size. When bystanders share group-level psychological relationships, group size can encourage as well as inhibit helping.
These findings can be explained in terms of self-categorization and empathy. From the perspective of self-categorization theory, a person's own social identity, well-being is tied to their group membership so that when a group based identity is salient, the suffering of one group member can be considered to directly affect the group. Because of this shared identity, referred to as self-other merging, bystanders are able to empathize, which has been found to predict helping behaviour. For example, in a study relating to helping after eviction both social identification and empathy were found to predict helping. However, when social identification was controlled for, empathy no longer predicted helping behaviour.
In India, the phenomena of bystanders failing to help after witnessing violent incidents have also been partly attributed to culture. Indian sociologist Ashis Nandy contended it was due to the "increasing brutalisation of our society" which resulted from "rapid cultural change and the change in education standards". According to psychologist Devika Kapoor, the bystander effect in India "seems more pronounced because of our cultural conditioning. We're often told to mind our own business as young kids and not ask questions. This then carries into our adult lives too, where we choose to isolate ourselves from situations that don't concern us."
This practitioners' study suggests that the "bystander effect" can be studied and analyzed in a much broader fashion. The broader view includes not just a) what bystanders do in singular emergencies, b) helping strangers in need, when c) there are (or are not) other people around. The reactions of bystanders can also be analyzed a) when the bystanders perceive any of a wide variety of unacceptable behavior over time, b) they are within an organizational context, and c) with people whom they know. The practitioners' study reported many reasons why some bystanders within organizations do not act or report unacceptable behavior. The study also suggests that bystander behavior is, in fact, often helpful, in terms of acting on the spot to help and reporting unacceptable behavior (and emergencies and people in need.) The ombuds practitioners' study suggests that what bystanders will do in real situations is actually very complex, reflecting views of the context and their managers (and relevant organizational structures if any) and also many personal reasons.
In support of the idea that some bystanders do indeed act responsibly, Gerald Koocher and Patricia Keith Spiegel wrote a 2010 article related to an NIH-funded study which showed that informal intervention by peers and bystanders can interrupt or remedy unacceptable scientific behavior.Koocher, G. and Spiegel, K. S. "Peers Nip Misconduct in the Bud". (July 22, 2010) Nature 438–440, 466
Results indicated that the gender of the victim had no effect on whether or not a bystander assisted the victim. Consistent with findings of Latané and Darley, the number of people present in the chat room did have an effect. The response time for smaller chat groups was quicker than in the larger chat groups. However, this effect was nonexistent when the victim (Suzy or Jake) asked for help from a specific person in the chat group. The mean response time for groups in which a specific person was called out was 36.38 seconds. The mean response time for groups in which no screen name was pointed out was 51.53 seconds. A significant finding of the research is that intervention depends on whether or not a victim asked for help by specifying a screen name. The group size effect was inhibited when the victim specifically asked a specific person for help. The group size effect was not inhibited if the victim did not ask a specific person for help.
In a further study, Thornberg concluded that there are seven stages of moral deliberation as a bystander in bystander situations among the Swedish schoolchildren he observed and interviewed: (a) noticing that something is wrong, i.e., children pay selective attention to their environment, and sometimes they do not tune in on a distressed peer if they are in a hurry or their view is obstructed, (b) interpreting a need for help—sometimes children think others are just playing rather than actually in distress or they display pluralistic ignorance, (c) feeling empathy, i.e., having tuned in on a situation and concluded that help is needed, children might feel sorry for an injured peer, or angry about unwarranted aggression (empathic anger), (d) processing the school's moral frames—Thornberg identified five contextual ingredients influencing children's behavior in bystander situations (the definition of a good student, tribe caring, gender stereotypes, and social-hierarchy-dependent morality), (e) scanning for social status and relations, i.e., students were less likely to intervene if they did not define themselves as friends of the victim or belonging to the same significant social category as the victim, or if there were high-status students present or involved as aggressors—conversely, lower-status children were more likely to intervene if only a few other low-status children were around, (f) condensing motives for action, such as considering a number of factors such as possible benefits and costs, and (g) acting, i.e., all of the above coalesced into a decision to intervene or not. It is striking how this was less an individual decision than the product of a set of interpersonal and institutional processes.
In the case of S. vs. Sibisi and Others (1989) eight members of the South African Railways and Harbours Union were involved in the murder of four workers who chose not to join in the SARHWU strike. Psychologists Scott Fraser and Andrew Colman presented evidence for the defense using research from social psychology. Social anthropologist Boet Kotzé provided evidence for the defense as well. He testified that African cultures are characterized by a collective consciousness. Kotzé testified that the collective conscious contributed to the defendants' willingness to act with the group rather than act as individuals. Fraser and Colman stated that bystander apathy, deindividuation, conformity and group polarization were extenuating factors in the killing of the four strike breakers. They explained that deindividuation may affect group members' ability to realize that they are still accountable for their individual actions even when with a group. They also used research on bystander apathy by Latané and Darley to illustrate why four of the eight defendants watched as the other four defendants killed four men. The testimonies of Fraser and Colman helped four of the defendants escape the death penalty.
In the US, Good Samaritan laws have been implemented to protect bystanders who acted in good faith. Many organizations are including bystander training. For example, the United States Department of the Army is doing bystander training with respect to sexual assault. Some organizations routinely do bystander training with respect to safety issues. Others have been doing bystander training with respect to diversity issues. Organizations such as American universities are also using bystander research to improve bystander attitudes in cases of rape. Examples include the InterAct Sexual Assault Prevention program and the Green Dot program. Others have been critical of these laws for being punitive and criminalizing the problem they are meant to address.
Many institutions have worked to provide options for bystanders who see behavior they find unacceptable. These options are usually provided through complaint systems—so bystanders have choices about where to go. One option that is particularly helpful is that of an organizational ombudsman, who keeps no records for the employer and is near-absolutely confidential.
The shocking account drew widespread public attention and many newspaper editorials. Psychology researchers Latané and Darley attributed the lack of help by witnesses to diffusion of responsibility: because each witness saw others witnessing the same event, they assumed that the others would be taking responsibility and calling the police, and therefore did nothing to stop the situation themselves.
An article published in American Psychologist in 2007 found that the story of Genovese's murder had been exaggerated by the media. There were far fewer than 38 eyewitnesses, the police were called at least once during the attack, and many of the bystanders who overheard the attack could not actually see the event. In 2016, The New York Times called its own reporting "flawed", stating that the original story "grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived"..
This assault gained international attention for the passengers' apparent lack of action, though some scholars argued that the bystanders simply did not know what to do in that instance. According to SEPTA general manager Leslie Richards, the arrest occurred 3 minutes after the initial 911 call, which happened after the victim had been harassed for more than half an hour. The organization eventually released a statement, saying "There were other people on the train who witnessed this horrific act, and it may have been stopped sooner if a rider called 911." However, Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer refuted the claim that the bystanders were filming the assault, countering that many of the bystanders may not have understood what they were seeing.
The case invoked public outrage, shock and anger over the extensive cruelty of the case and death of the maid. Piang's case also demonstrated chilling similarities and comparisons to Kitty Genovese's murder and the existence of the bystander effect, as it was discovered that during the regular health-checks at the hospital and the maid agency, there were people who suspected that Piang may have been abused but Gaiyathiri and her family denied them; no police report was made in relation to these suspected signs of maid abuse.
However, the final statement is likely to be inaccuarate. As a 2022 study conducted by one of the same researchers of the initial 2019 study has found that the presence of a weapon had no effect on whether people would intervene or not. Unlike most prior studies on the bystander effect, these studies focused on the likelihood of receiving help in a public confrontation at all, rather than simply comparing the difference between likelihood of bystander intervention when alone or in a group. The 2019 study concluded that the decreased likelihood of a particular person helping was offset by the increased likelihood that at least someone would help. Findings were consistent with other studies that showed lower rates of bystander apathy when the situation was a dangerous emergency.
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