A New Study Uses Camera Footage To Track the Frequency of Bystander Intervention (citylab.com) 67
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CityLab: It's one of the most enduring urban myths of all: If you get in trouble, don't count on anyone nearby to help. Research dating back to the late 1960s documents how the great majority of people who witness crimes or violent behavior refuse to intervene. Psychologists dubbed this non-response as the "bystander effect" -- a phenomenon which has been replicated in scores of subsequent psychological studies. The "bystander effect" holds that the reason people don't intervene is because we look to one another. The presence of many bystanders diffuses our own sense of personal responsibility, leading people to essentially do nothing and wait for someone else to jump in.
Past studies have used police reports to estimate the effect, but results ranged from 11 percent to 74 percent of incidents being interventions. Now, widespread surveillance cameras allow for a new method to assess real-life human interactions. A new study published this year in the American Psychologist finds that this well-established bystander effect may largely be a myth. The study uses footage of more than 200 incidents from surveillance cameras in Amsterdam; Cape Town; and Lancaster, England. The study finds that in nine out of 10 incidents, at least one bystander intervened, with an average of 3.8 interveners. There was also no significant difference across the three countries and cities, even though they differ greatly in levels of crime and violence. The study actually found that the more bystanders there were, the more likely it was that at least someone would intervene to help. "This is a powerful corrective to the common perception of 'stranger danger' and the 'unknown other,'" reports CityLab. "It suggests that people are willing to self-police to protect their communities and others."
Past studies have used police reports to estimate the effect, but results ranged from 11 percent to 74 percent of incidents being interventions. Now, widespread surveillance cameras allow for a new method to assess real-life human interactions. A new study published this year in the American Psychologist finds that this well-established bystander effect may largely be a myth. The study uses footage of more than 200 incidents from surveillance cameras in Amsterdam; Cape Town; and Lancaster, England. The study finds that in nine out of 10 incidents, at least one bystander intervened, with an average of 3.8 interveners. There was also no significant difference across the three countries and cities, even though they differ greatly in levels of crime and violence. The study actually found that the more bystanders there were, the more likely it was that at least someone would intervene to help. "This is a powerful corrective to the common perception of 'stranger danger' and the 'unknown other,'" reports CityLab. "It suggests that people are willing to self-police to protect their communities and others."
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"Captain Kirk Syndrome" What? Do You. Mean. By That?
Humor aside, the Holocaust was mob, racial and state endorsed violence, not 'day to day' crime. You can see some of that when cops do bad things, people rarely intervene. I suspect that as more 'authority' and violence is brought into the equation other factors become more present for the bystanders.
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I suspect that the main reason people dont intervene is fear of consequences, not some diffusion of morality bullshit. People just keep their head down in risky situations, especially if their is fear of the state ruining your life (for example, you get charged with assault when helping break up a fight even if you throw no punches). We live in both a highly reputation-driven and highly surveilled world.
You can see the bystander effect in MMOs: most players won't intervene to help another player, where there is literally no cost or threat to do so, and in some cases you'd even receive some form of in-game reward. In fact, players are more likely to try and hinder other players, even when there would be no cost to helping and the shared reward would be greater than the solo reward.
Which makes me think that the research is, at best, suspect. The bystander effect is quite real. The fact that you can see it in
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most players won't intervene to help another player
Help someone who is, what, at risk? Of... something?
Players will ignore someone grinding away at their own business. Players WILL intervene when passing by and can rescue someone who has a digital avatar *at risk* of imminent death. 10,000 hours of wasted WoW-life talking, I'll stand by my claim.
If you're talking about "hey will anyone clear Darkvine Cave for me until i get the rare helmet?" or "will anyone craft me a mythril sword for free" then sure, go bystand yourself where the sun don't reach. If someo
Maybe we corrected for it. (Score:1)
The idea of the bystander effect is both so appalling and so plausible that many folks may have programmed themselves to break the trance and do something (for better or worse) rather than stand around like an impotent zombie.
It is a mix. (Score:2, Informative)
I've heard stories of people being left on sidewalks for hours, and others being helped immediately.
Just last weekend I watched 5 cars pull off a 4 lane road in order to stop and help a person who had overturned one of those electric scooters. There were so many people stopping in fact that most of us had to return to our cars because we would have been more hindrance than help (it was on a narrow sidewalk next to a fast moving roadway.)
Point is: Some people are culturally or socially imbued to help others,
Re: It's not myth (Score:4, Insightful)
You should seek psychological and emotional help.
More like... (Score:4, Insightful)
... people don't want to worry about lawsuits and legal bullshit. The real problem is not that people don't want to help, but where your help is not wanted or gets you involved in legal bullshit. AKA it's great to help people when you know the people on the other end aren't stupid or beligerant, but if you get involved with people that are idiots, they will suck you into their madness.
So I don't blame people for being of two minds, it's really a lack of any kind of cultural places where people spend lots of time together to build community. When everyone is at work and has little time... people are tired, exhausted and can't be bothered.
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Behavioural researchers have created scenarios of 'stranger violence' and 'domestic violence': People are less helpful in domestic cases, and obviously for this reason: Being assaulted by a family member does not equal a willingness to leave the family or hold that member accountable.* Thus, any bystanders attempting to do so, will be unwanted and be punished. Police are in a worse situation, since the violence will repeat and they are forced to intervene just-enough to end the assault.
*: It seems some
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What you are talking about is an evolutionary leftover.
In the bad old days of being hunter-gatherors (and of being just animals before that), the world was brutal and strength was paramount to survival. Females sought mates who were not only physically strong but mentally ready to use that strength against enemies, and to assert dominance in the tribe. So, they went for violent men.
A natural consequence is sometimes being on the receiving end of that violence. The adaptation here is not only acceptance o
Re: More like... (Score:2)
This.
Remember how the girls would always go after Fonzie? The biker in the leathers is the "unknown". Don't play by the rules. Rebel without a cause, etc.
Well, it turns out those guys aren't reliable, and oops we have an epidemic of stupid rolling through the generations. To note: the more intelligent the person the less likely to breed. This is why films like Idiocracy are so interesting.
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"In the bad old days of being hunter-gatherors (and of being just animals before that), the world was brutal and strength was paramount to survival. Females sought mates who were not only physically strong but mentally ready to use that strength against enemies, and to assert dominance in the tribe. So, they went for violent men."
But being strong and physically assertive is only part of what was being selected.
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Legal bullshit is why Good Samaritan laws [wikipedia.org] were created. I'm glad we have such laws in my state, at least. It's a terrible notion that someone who tried to help another with the best intentions would get sucked into a legal morass.
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No. When you are face to face with someone in real trouble, you're not thinking about lawsuits, unless you're a lawyer.
In any case, the conclusion of the study is that people DO help, 9 of 10 times.
Task Peer Pressure (Score:2)
The prior experiments, from my understanding, mostly took place in an office-type setting and had the subjects complete some task; while they were completing the task, some disturbance (fire, injury, etc.) outside the room would occur, and they'd measure people's response to that. If a group of people are set to do a certain task, then there's peer pressure to continue working on the task, and not interrupt that work to check out what experience tells us is likely nothing. That's why experiments found that
Re:Task Peer Pressure (Score:5, Interesting)
If a group of people are set to do a certain task, then there's peer pressure to continue working on the task,
I used to work for Boeing. At a facility that predated fire alarms, intercoms, etc.* So we had a system of 'safety captains'. Employees assigned hard hats, hi-viz vests and bullhorns. We had a coupe of drills per year under fire department supervision. Safety captain orders everyone out and assemble at assigned spots in the parking lot. The thing was: Company policy was that we were not to leave our desks unless ordered to by the captain.
Nisqually earthquake [wikipedia.org] hits. Everyone dives under desks. Ceiling tiles and light fixtures fall. A few book cases tip. All the power goes out. When the shaking stops, people come out from under desks and wait for the safety captains' orders. Nothing. Those bastards were the first ones out the doors.
*I suspect that some money crossed building inspectors hands in order to maintain the exemption from having to bring buildings up to codes.
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Fire Drill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Real research on this needs to control for gun law (Score:5, Interesting)
Any real research on this needs to control for the local laws (and their enforcement), especially with respect to
- how self-defence and others-defence is treated after the fact by law enforcement,
- whether the general population may, and whether significant numbers do, carry guns or other self-defence weaponry
- what advice the authorities give people about how to handle conflicts
- whether recent criminal activity includes a pattern of using fake people-in-trouble to lure good samartins into becoming victims.
In New York city, at the time of the infamous murder of "Kittyâ Genovese, the advice from the city authorities to citizens was to not get involved, for fear that they would also be victimized, and instead let the police handle it. (NYC at the time already had the equally infamous and draconian Sullivan act, which disarmed virtually all of the population.)
In urban parts of California, prosecutors have a track record of prosecuting those who self-defend against criminal attack, and of going after such people much harder than they do against violent criminals - to the point of giving the crooks immunity in return for testimony against their self-defending victims.
Also in California (after large-scale car theft led to car alarms with engine-disable features becoming nearly universal) criminal gangs developed a pattern of carjacking by faking a breakdowns and stealing the car of whomever stopped to help.
Even calling in reports of observed crimes is problematic: Criminal gangs have a record of placing members in police departments as dispatchers. (This is mainly to give warning to their members when the cops are on the way. But it also enables terrorism and witness intimidation, by identifying those who report observed crimes for later retaliatory attacks.)
My wife and I regularly stop to help anyone who has trouble in Nevada, Oregon, and other places where concealed weapons carry is common. In California, and other gun-unfriendly states, we don't even slow down.
Re:Real research on this needs to control for gun (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually the whole Kitty Genovese bystander story is more or less a myth [apa.org]. Only a few people ever heard her cries for help and they did in fact respond by calling the police and yelling at her attacker from the window and forcing him to flee (but he returned a few minutes later and killed her then.) Abe Rosenthal, the then editor of the NYT, basically made up the entire narrative of 38 people standing by, listening to her being murdered, and doing nothing.
There's no more or less about it. (Score:3)
It was a complete fabrication by New York Times' reporter Martin Gansberg and his editor Abe Rosenthal, who later published a book about the case.
In fact people not only called the police, her neighbor, Sophia Farrar came down and held Genovese as she lay there bleeding.
Genovese died on her way to the hospital.
There's an interesting documentary on the subject, [imdb.com] following her brother as he goes through the case and the narrative, talking to witnesses and people involved.
It's pretty good.
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A big part of building the lie was the police were satisfied to just shrug and blame the people for not calling them. The individual police officers were not even necessarily lying, but telling a story that might have been true based on the very scant information they had before bothering to mount a careful investigation.
In that era, the truth is the quality of service provided by police desks taking random calls about screaming late at night, and whether any information received would be acted upon or wri
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Actually the whole Kitty Genovese bystander story is more or less a myth.
Thanks to you and the followup posters for that information. It's nice to know that the story of more than a score of won't-get-involved bystanders was fake news and a police snafu, rather than a social suppression of "ordinary heroes".
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Given that my wife grew up in Oregon and Washington, went to college there, and has friends and family we visit, we have a retirement/vacation home/ranch in Nevada w
China (Score:2)
We are paranoid (Score:2)
The news always covers events that are NOT ordinary, otherwise we wouldn't watch it because it would be too boring. This leads us to believe that the streets are full of bad people just waiting to hurt us. "Helicopter parents" are the ultimate personification of this paranoia.
The reality is that most people are decent. We should probably relax a little and have some faith in our fellow man.
40 years of don't fight back (Score:2)