The Bystander Effect

Maybe I Should Go Help Them.

by Kayla Isabelle

Let’s say there was an accident and people, you included, start gathering and forming a crowd around the accident. Would you immediately help the person or would you just stay in the crowd hoping someone would help? Well chances are, you and most of the people around you wouldn’t help. This might not be because you are bad people but it's probably because of psychology. 

This is called the bystander effect, a social psychological term for when individuals become less likely to offer help to others in a large group. It is mainly because many of the individuals only do in fact want to help but are waiting to see if others are going to assist or believe that that person will be helped eventually just not by yourself. This can lead to the victim not getting any proper help or assistance for a long while which, depending on the situation, can vary between someone’s life or just the awkwardness of watching them struggle.

A social experiment in 2017 uploaded on youtube, by the channel Participant on their “Science of Empathy” series, showcases this very well. The experiment was to have a single subject sit within a group of 10 or 5 people, who were in on the experiment, or by themselves and have someone struggle to build a tent in front of them. The subjects in the group of 10 took the longest amount of time before helping, while participants by themselves helped within seconds or minutes. When they were asked why it took a while to help, it was because they were shy or they wanted to see if the others would go ahead first even though they knew they should have just done it in the first place. This entails that people in a group are less likely to help because they think someone else will do it, which creates a diffusion of responsibility. The larger the group, the lesser the possibility for help. Meaning that, you can increase your empathy by being more empathetic and brave than just being sympathetic while waiting with everyone else.

So, if you ever find someone who is struggling or in need and you would like to help them, just do it. Who knows, you could be that someone that saves their day.