by Shama Shams, Director of Philanthropy & Marketing and a Survivor
A couple of weeks ago a video surfaced from a surveillance camera on Aurora Avenue. It appeared that a young woman was being physically abused by a man. This woman was in the middle of the street when he approached her and knocked her down to the pavement as he kicked and punched her repeatedly.
Car after car approached the intersection where this abuse was taking place and turned away. No one got out of the car to offer help during this three-minute video footage.
The term “bystander intervention” describes a situation where someone who isn’t directly involved steps in to change the outcome. Stepping in may give the person of concern a chance to get to a safe place or leave the situation.
As I watched the video, I found myself wondering why no one stopped to lend a hand. As a survivor of physical and sexual abuse, that question came to my mind countless times a question not just directed to strangers, but to my own family members as well. So many people knew and even witnessed my abuse, but allowed it to continue. What makes us look the other way?
In 1964, Kitty Genovese was arriving home from work in the middle of the night when she was brutally stabbed to death while several of her neighbors looked on. This incident led to the coining of the term “bystander effect” – a phenomenon within social psychology that describes how people are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present.
After Genovese’s murder, there was a widespread public condemnation of the witnesses who did not come to Kitty Genovese’s aid. The incident also gave rise to an entire area of psychological research to determine why some bystanders help and why others do not.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, a bystander is present in 70 percent of assaults and 52 percent of robberies. The percentage of people who help a victim varies widely by the type of crime, the environment, and other key variables.
A well-known study found that when bystanders were alone, 75 percent helped when they thought a person was in trouble. However, when a group of six people was together, only 31 percent helped.
Being part of a group often diminishes one’s sense of personal responsibility. Instead, there’s a feeling of anonymity. In this state, people are more likely to do things they would never do individually.
Common reasons for not coming to the aid of a victim include:
fear that the personal risk of harm is too great
feeling that one doesn’t have the strength or other traits needed in order to be able to help
assuming that others are better qualified to help
watching the reactions of other witnesses and assuming the situation is not as serious as you initially thought because they don’t seem alarmed
or fear becoming the target of aggression or bullying
The bystander effect has become one of the most well-recognized concepts in modern psychology. And it extends far beyond how people behave in an emergency. In just about any group situation requiring one person to step forward to accomplish something necessary, there is often a delay while members of the group decide who will be the volunteer who will act.
In the volunteer’s dilemma, a mutually beneficial outcome will result from one person doing a relatively unpleasant task while the others simply benefit without doing anything. This means that each member of the group needs to decide on whether to be the one to step forward or not.
Much like the bystander effect, the time needed to decide who will volunteer rises depending on how many volunteers there are in the group. If there are only two volunteers, then it quickly devolves into a game of "you do it, no you do it" (a familiar enough scenario in real life).
The next time you find yourself in a situation agonizing over who will do something, think about the bystander effect and the volunteer's dilemma. Sometimes, all it takes is one person willing to act.