The Bystander Effect and You

What's what's the juicy story that everyone is outraged about. Well, there is a woman named Kitty Genovese and this New York City, this is in It was actually in Queen's and she is a twenty eight year old bar manager and she's coming back from her job something like three o'clock in the morning, and she gets out of her car and she's walking and she is all of a sudden, she's in hot pursuit by this guy wielding a knife, and she happens to be in a neighborhood right um,

and she calls out for help. He begins to stab her, and the story goes like this that for thirty five in it's during three different attacks because this guy like attacks her and then he realizes that his cars in the open and people will I d his car, so he goes and he moves his car and he comes back, and he starts attacking her, and then so on and so forth, three different attacks. Her cries were heard by an estimated thirty eight people, and all of this unprovoked,

just out of the blue, random attack, and and she dies. Um. Finally the one person telephones the police. One person out of the thirty eight. This is the story, and it absolutely shocks the United States. Um, the people in the United States, they're just horrified that we could let this happen to a fellow human, particularly when they say that the people who overheard this, Yeah, I heard of this lady screaming and I didn't know what was going on

or I didn't want to get involved. That was something that they heard. Um, And you know, it's it's just awful to think that we could allow something like this to happen to another person. Yeah, I mean it is. It is a really um to hear this story, as it was popularized in the New York Times that year and has since. This is and has since become a

popularized version of this story. Um. Yeah, it's really it's really damning information because the ideas, hey, I could be that one that one person you know, and then and then you feel shameful to think, But then am I one of those thirty people that in any other situation would do nothing right? Yeah, people really took it um to heart, and it became known as the genevase syndrome, but also known as the bystander effect, which is something that's probably know that term is known better now or

just bystander apathy, right by standard apathy. Yeah. This, and but what we found out though, is that this story was actually greatly exaggerated. Yes, Kitty Genevase A was killed by a man who went out that night and decided that he was going to kill a woman. Um, and and and he was very open about this, Like there this guy was was mentally disturbed and was very open about I went out to kill somebody that night. And he's still in prison h to this day. Um yeah.

But it turns out that there weren't as many bystanders as previously thought. There was something around the order of six people. And in fact, she was at one point dragged to this one part of the building I think it was in maybe like the portico, and one guy could hear her essentially being finished off, so to speak. But he, you know, he still didn't contact the police. He was inebriated. He didn't want to um get involved,

so he did ask his neighbor to call the police. Yeah, there's an American psychologist paper from two thousand seven where they went back and they were they were going beyond the New York Times article and looking at legal documents, court transcripts, and some recent historical research into the the event, into the attack, and they had found that there were two attacks, not three, that the kind of the way that the crime scene was configured would have made it

impossible for all but one of the known witnesses to have seen the crime in its entirety. Yeah, and the people, uh, the police may have been called him much earlier than thought, and she may have been alive when the cops arrived. So okay, And the reason why we're bringing all this up is because you know, whether or not the story was exaggerated, what it did is it actually helped people to put a term to to something that actually is

a real condition, the bystander effect. You kicked off enough outrage and public interest that we named it, and a lot of really solid research went into why this kind of behavior exists in the crowd. Yeah, and we've seen this again and again, And in fact, Joseph DeMay, who who talks about the story and how it's exaggerated, was asked on the show on the Media NPR show, it's

really great if you checked it out. Um. He was asked, well, so, okay, if that story was exaggerated, that doesn't really exist, and he said, well, of course, the bystandard effect exists. Just look around you. You know, there was that incident where poor worker was trampled at the Green Acres shopping center by shoppers anxious to get an electronic sale. We've seen this again and again, I think just most recently there was a pregnant woman who was trampled and lost her baby.

Um with this same sort of excitement that was happening around around a sale. Yeah, and you don't even really have You don't even have to go to outrageous newspaper stories to to get examples of it. Just any time you've ever driven down the highway and passed that that poor guy, that poor family that has a flat tire, because you you just keep going and you probably don't even really think anything about it. Well you think someone

else will help. Well, yeah, even if you if you even consciously, uh, you know, turn the wheels like maybe you know it's having a subconscious level a lot of the time, but but you know, you might think, oh, well someone else will help them, or oh they probably called triple away or they got it well. And even even in the circumstance like this, DeMay points out like, okay, there was a woman in the King's County psychiatric ward who collapsed on the floor there where where she's being

taken care of, right in theory. So basically the staff just left her there to die, you know, four hours later she died. Um. And then he also said, you know there that you can look in the newspaper on any given da and see something that is reflective of the bystander effect. Um. And he says that, you know, it's a it's this diffusion of responsibility, and it's impossible to say that such a phenomenon of some sort does

not exist. Yeah, So there are four key components in the bystander effect, like you said, one of them is diffuse responsibility. That's just the simple idea that if thirty people were witnessing something, that if I'm one of thirty people witnessing an event, well, they're twenty nine other people that could do something. It's like if I'm driving down an interstate and I see somebody with a flat tire, they're countless cars. Like, there are plenty of other people.

I'm just one of many. Somebody will do something about that. But if I am on a like say a deserted road in the middle of nowhere, that and I know that I'm probably one of the only people that are going to go down that road today, and I see somebody with a flat tire, well, then there's not really much in the way of diffused responsibility unless I have some sort of mistaken idea that a woodchuck is going to help this guy with his tire. A woodchuck could,

if a witch could, that's true. That's that's to saying. Another one is self awareness. All right. This is the perceived or actual presence of an audience to your actions that inhibits you from acting all right, you don't want to appear foolish or inappropriate. An example of this um takes me back to this weekend when I was at the dentist office and I go in. I'm sitting down at the Nednist office, and they always have you know,

the TVs on it's playing something annoying. I was the only person in there, and they were playing an episode of UM Law and Order of Special Victims Unit, and it was like this whole thing like some it all has to do with like sexual assault, like very much the kind of thing that we covered, The kind of story we covered with at the beginning's not necessarily something you want to watch while you are in a dentist chair. Yeah, but I'm kind of like, all right, I don't feel

like like complaining about it. But then a mother and two kids comes in come into the dnist dopice and they sat down, they like start feeling out the paperwork. But it's like two little kids and they're they're reading their little children's books, and the mom sitting there looking at a magazine and the TV is Special Victims Unit with you know, in in investigators looking into like sexual offenses and and some pretty graphic discussion of what these uh,

these these crimes consisted of. And so I'm sitting there and part of me is like I should get up and go tell the lady the front desk, Hey, there are kids here. Why don't you change to Disney Channel or something um, you know, or something less um potentially traumatic. But the other voice was saying, no, the mom setting right there, I'm gonna come off looking like a total jerk because I'm gonna be implying that she doesn't know what she's doing, or she, you know, isn't exerting enough

responsibility for these kids. So that's a self awareness factor of it. We're afraid, you know, somebody needs help, but are we gonna look stupid getting up and going to help them? So we're afraid of being judged right right? Then the next one is social clues. All right, Individuals actively look to one another for for queues about how to behave in the situation. The pluralistic ignorance. Yeah, I think so this is like you say, you're on on the on the subway train and there's some by the acting,

there's somebody acting strange there. You sort of look to everybody else to say, hey, we should we be concerned about this? Is this? Is this for real? Is this a deal? You know? And uh? And if nobody everyone else is ignoring it, you're kind of like, all right, I guess this is nothing. I'm just gonna you know, I straight ahead right back to my book or something. But if everyone else is looking a little weird, then

you're like, all right, this is something serious. Some one of us is gonna pick it up and go push the alert button. That kind of situations, and then there's blocking. This is a realization that if somebody needs help, all thirty of us cannot help in this particular situation. Like if if it's a situation where do you just need one person maybe to to help this individual with their situation, thirty people is just gonna overwhelm them and possibly make

a situation worse. So is that that same idea of just shirking off the responsibility because you figure that someone else is going to help, or like like you're they're thirty people. And then there's another person who has a cut on their finger. If if we all go and put a band aid on it, that's the person doesn't need thirty band needs. They need one, maybe two band aids, you know, if they want to do the cross thing.

But um, that would be kind of awesome in that and and horrible too, crushed by thirty people just trying to get your hand bandaged. Um yeah, I mean this again, this diffusion of responsibility. I think is really interesting. And um, there are two rules that we usually operate in under when we're in society, one that we ought to help right and too that we ought to do what everyone

else is doing. So these temporary rules bubble up that we inadvertently create when we're a group, which we have, we're not even communicating to one another, you know, with language, right, we're not even saying, hey, let's not do this because we all feel okay with it. But somehow we all know that, you know, we're all bouncing off of each other and somehow are thinking to ourselves, okay, well if you're not concerned about it, that I'm not concerned about

And I think that's fascinating. And there are a bunch of BBC shorts um that were experiences that you can go on YouTube and see them where they show us in action and I thought it was pretty fascinating. They did one UM set of videos at the Liverpool Street station in London and there was an actor dressed in jeans and overcoat and sneakers and he's crumpled up at the foot of the stairs and he's sanging to people as they passed by, please help me, Please help me.

And he lays there for twenty minutes, twenty minutes without anybody helping him, which I think in and of itself is pretty interesting. But then they have a female actor do the same thing. She's dressed in a skirt and a jacket, she has a purse on, and she's not saying help me, but she actually she kind of looks dead actually, but she sprawled out on the stairs and thirty four people pass in four minutes and they don't help her. And finally there's a woman who is uh.

You see her behavior, it's very interesting. She starts to pass by, and then she starts, she stops, and she kind of looks around at other people like, Hey, isn't this weird? And then she kind of circles and hangs out, but she's not quite going to do anything yet. Out of nowhere, this guy comes directly to the woman and says, are you okay? And then all of a sudden she's right by his side and she's saying, you know, can I help you? You know, she needed that guy to

come to to corroborate her concern. Yeah, And you see that happen a lot, a lot. You know, it's like the first person to actually come forward and try to help somebody. Then suddenly there are a few other people as well. Yeah, maybe not all thirty, but suddenly it'll go from you know, from nothing to five or six just like that. Yeah. Well, and this was the most interesting one. This is the the third person in this experiment.

It was the same actor from the from the first that was crumpled on the stairs with his jeans on. But um, now he comes back and he's dressed in like an impeccable expensive suit and he's crumpled up at the bottom of the stairs, and it takes just six seconds for one person to help him, which then attracts this crowd of people who are now around him saying yeah, yeah, can you can I help you? So there is this one element where where yeah, we're we're sort of seating

our decisions to other people. But then it's sort of like, well, if you're if you look socially like in in the most correct role, then you're probably going to get more help, right right, because he looked important. All right, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we're gonna look at some of that hard research that that popped up following this, uh, the geneviec case. This podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow

and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers to life's questions. All right, and we're back. So, like we said, the Genovic case, Uh, some of the details are kind of contested, were not contested, but it is proven today and the version of the story that is sometimes um referenced in papers and textbooks, etcetera, is is maybe not the true version of what happened.

It's kind of kind of has become a parable. But the research, as we said, is still pretty solid. Like people were outraged enough by this they were like, let's do some studies and uh. And the first big study was this one by um Darley and Latine, Right, yeah, John Darlie and Biblitaine that this whole Jenevase syndrome or by sing or effect really inspired them to to try to look at this in multiple models and really ferret

out what was going on. Um And I think one of the ones that I think is most interesting to me is the lady in distress, and this experiment, subjects either waited alone with a friend or with a passive confederate meaning an actor who was acting passively right, or

with a stranger in a room. And the room was separate from another room by a curtain which they would pass on their way to their waiting room, and the experiment or who led them there returned to the other room and left, turning on a tape recording um of of what sounded like someone falling and then moaning in that other room. So they couldn't see that person, but for hundred and thirty seconds, they could hear this person

in some sort of distress. And they measured the percent of people who took action and how long it took for them to act. And overall, sixty one percent of people pulled back the curtain to check on the experiment or, because they assumed it was the experimenter who fell right, entered via another door to check on the experiment simply called out to say hey, are you okay, But nobody went to actually report the accident okay, to say, hey, there's someone hurt in the other room. Um. And this

is where the data gets really interesting. Sevent of alone subjects reacted, but only seven percent of those with another person in the in the room the passive confederate, the actor who just sat there and pretending like everything was okay, only seven percent of them reacted. So it means if you're if you're by yourself, you're probably going to be a lot more responsible, right, But if someone else is in the room, they don't seem concerned. Boom, it doesn't matter.

The subjects with confederates became confused and they frequently looked over at the person. And when they were paired with a stranger, only um of those people in the room with a stranger actually acted out or said hey, are you okay? So when they had their friends in the room, seventy of the time they helped um, which shows you know that they felt responsibility with someone that they knew okay. But what's interesting about that is that that's the same

percent as if they were alone. So you would think, and this is this is what the researchers say, that you would think that if they were alone, like of the time, they would have reacted. So based on the findings of that study, if I am also say I'm feeling like like, let's say I've been stabbed. No, no, that's what it's said. Let me let's say I have, UM I'm feeling really sick, and I'm I'm about to puke, and I'm I'm on the market train taking the train to work, and I get to choose which car I'm

going to throw up in. Um, and and after I throw up, I'm really going to hope somebody helps me and gets me to a hospital. What is the appropriate number of people on the train? Oh my goodness, is this like a test? Yeah, this is the test? Or you know, just asking your learning opinion? Oh my goodness, Oh yeah, even even better. I'm just gonna say that maybe one or two other people in the train with you is greatly going to increase your chances of getting aid.

But not one, it's just one person. If it's one, even better. That's my opinion, right, just from what we've seen that the lower the amount of people around you, the more app they are to help you. Correct. But if you're if you're about to puke all over the place and thirty people are in the train with you, they're all going to back away. Yeah, or I've already changed cars. What's it's it? Definitely provides a lot of insight into how crowds think. I mean, there's more to

health crowds think. We have believe we've covered some of this in the past, talking about the group think and and how crowds are respond h on a on a mental level. In in our very very recent episode, we discussed uh sort of the physics of crowds and how a large number of people can can quickly spiral out of control and then become this like the movement, the physical movement of the crowd becomes something that cannot be

predicted or control well. In the psychology is so interesting because going back to the Lady in distress um experiments that Lobott did UM, is that the interveners, the people who did something, they claimed that they acted that way because the fall seems serious and it was the right

thing to do. But the non interveners who were with the other people said that they were unsure what happened, UM, and they decided it wasn't serious, and some felt that they didn't want to embarrass the researcher, which was that

whole judgment part right, UM. So they were really influenced by the people that were in the room with them, and you don't think that when when you're you're making individual decisions, you don't even realize that on that level, you're sitting there calculating whether or not the person next to you is unless you're highly self aware, right right, usually don't realize that that person is having an effect on your decision making processes, which again brings into the

whole question of free will about whether or not it really exists. And this the study is especially interesting given the way our lives have been affected by social media and the internet, because you you everyone has seen stories in the past year or two where somebody, um, you know, basically put out a cry for help on Facebook on their Facebook profile and then in and in some of these cases, nobody really did anything and then the person dies or you know, it ends up trying to take

their own life or something to this effect. And uh, and people are like, why didn't we do anything? Why did we just sit there and just scan over there? They're they're depressing Facebook status update or why did we even maybe us ignore you know, why didn't we do something? Yeah, I was thinking about that too, that that when we talk about crowds these days, we really need to probably redefine what a crowd is because it's not doesn't have to be a bunch of people in a physical room together.

I mean, we have a crowd action via the internet these days with just as many community ties. Yeah, I saw. I was looking at a paper earlier UM from Georgian Student of Technology Georgia Tech here in town, and they were actually using the bystander effect UM as a as a way to try and understand patterns of participation in

online classrooms. So I found that interesting, Like they were kind of you know, taking it slightly out of its context because bystander effect deals more specifically with people responding to uh, you know, a bad situation, someone that's injured, somebody that's endanger, more of a life and death type of a thing, rather than are you paying attention to the lecture or not? Or are you participating in class?

But but but it did supply some insight into how these classrooms behave and to what degree they're going to interact with the class That makes total sense to me. In fact, that's you know, being in a classroom. I'm sure everybody knows that. Um. You know, whether or not you are eight years old at the time or twenty years old. When someone says something or something happens, don't you all look at each other to see how you're going to react, right, And it's a classic case of

how a crowd affects one another. Yeah, and you know it's one of those things too. If you're in a classroom where most people just do not care, I feel like a lot of times you're gonna be less likely to be the brainy egghead who's going to interact with the teacher. You could have an amazing lecturer, but if most of the people in there are sleeping or just kind of you know, shooting evilize at each other then drawing unicorns, drawing unicorns, then then you get it feels

like you're gonna be less less likely to interact. Whereas if the class, the class as a whole is really engaged, is going to be this energy of engagement and you're gonna want to be like, yeah, these are my thoughts on you know, fall Byzantium. Speaking of unicorns and doodling, didn't you just post something recently on Facebook about how

that actually helps you retain information in a meeting? Yes? Yeah, I was really uh yeah that was just came out the other day, I put it on the Facebook um profile for stuff to blow your mind, and uh and yeah, yeah that it was a ted talk Actually yeah, yeah, I didn't want to check that out because I was pretty excited about that. Yeah. Yeah, I headed on, but I was doling, so I didn't really of course. Yeah yeah,

but you retained everything. Yeah, but you don't know that makes sense because I I doodle a lot, and and some of my note taking is borderline doodling. It's just kind of well, I've noticed just when you and I talked about podcast subjects sometimes, um, when we meet beforehand just to say, hey, we're going to talk about that, you draw a lot of pictures when when you're talking about this up to you you want to explain, you're

illustrating it. It's pretty great. We should post those actually sometimes well sometimes it's about like you know, I do a lot of talking with my hands sometimes, but that's that's that's sometimes instead of doing that, I'll just you know, you just sort of doodle and sort of draw the motions on the paper. I don't know why, but I don't know. There you go. So I actually do not have any listener mail because I forgot to get some because there's there's a similarly endless supply of it. But

I forgot to dip the ladle into the bucket. Um. I can't believe you forgot your ladle. Yeah, you didn't hear the scream on the inside, did you on the inside of the Yeah, when you said that we'll survive that I spose gut. The name of Brandon did come up to me at a campfire this weekend because you were out of camp fire? Okay, yeah, well it was in the backyard. I don't know IF's really a camp fires in the backyard. Nobody's camping, but you know there's

a fire and uh. And so he came up and said, Hey, this show is really great, you know. So thanks Brandon. So if you know me and you would like to approach me and tell me the show is great, do so. It will not be awkward at all. It'll be it'll be kind of awesome, and we'll we'll grow closer for the experience. I heard too that if someone does that to you, that you'll start crooning stuff to blow your mind song to them. Is that true? We have a song for a pleasant train. You mean the secret lyrics

to the intro song play every time. Oh, yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's only available if you approach me in person, though, UM, try not to do it at a funeral because I'm I'm oath bound to break into song and I would prefer not to do it in front of an open casket. Yeah, awkward places where you probably shouldn't do it. All right, So there you go. UM. I hope that you guys have all enjoyed, UM some interesting facts about the by Center effect, and it certainly made me think about my

own reactions to circumstances in my life. Um, and whether or not I was unknowingly under the power of it. Yeah, and I should I should also add that the at the didneral office, they eventually did change the TV to Disney Channel, but it was more. It was more it was a situation where the lady we're working the front desk kind of figured out it's like, oh, maybe I should change off of um a special Victims unit and

maybe go to like Donald Tuck or something. That's all right because they just went home and played Grand Auto Theft and killed a couple of hookers. Anyway, Grand Theft Auto. But it's adorable that you thought it was Grand Auto. I always say it that way, so there you can anyway. So if you have anything you would like to share with us, be it about Grand Auto, theft, or uh your own encounters with the apathy of the crowds, then let us know about it. For starters, you can find

us on Facebook and Twitter. We are blow the Mind on both of those, and you can always drop us a line at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.