Analytical Essay on Bystander Effect in Tragic Cases

Bystander effect occurs when the presence of others hinders an individual from lending a hand in an emergency situation. According to a study conducted by social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley (1968), the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will take action to help a person in distress. Observers are more likely to take action in a crisis if there are lesser or no other witnesses present in the vicinity. (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, 2017)

Perhaps the most commonly named example of the bystander effect is the brutal murder of 28-year-old Kitty Genovese who was raped and stabbed to death in front of her apartment complex in New York City in 1964. (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, 2017) Although the attack lasted for over 30 minutes, several dozens of people who have witnessed the attack failed to respond to her repeated calls for help. When one of the neighbors finally called the police, it was too late – Genovese was already dead before they got her to the hospital.

Meanwhile, October 13, 2011 marked the plight of a little girl named Wang Yue from Foshan in Guangdong, China. A security camera captured the shocking incident where young Yueyue was walking the market street of Foshan and she was run over by a white van. The driver stopped the van but then pulled away, crushing the toddler for a second time under the rear tires. A few minutes later, another truck trundled down the lane, running over the child for the third time. In the video, eighteen people were seen to have walked and cycled past Yueyue as she lies visibly on the road, bleeding profusely. However, not a single person stopped to help. It was only the nineteenth passerby, a 58-year-old woman, who bothered to move the girl to safety and look for help. Even though Yueyue was still brought to the hospital, she was in a coma since the incident and eventually passed after a few days. (Hong & Jiang, 2011; Patience, 2011)

Both cases sparked an outcry from the public and questions the moral standards and sense of compassion of the society, especially because both circumstances would not have been so tragic had one of the bystanders stopped to help earlier. But why didn’t any of the neighbors or the passers-by lent a hand? Are they really horrible people for choosing to ignore instead of aiding someone who is obviously in desperate need of help? Using the social phenomena known as diffusion of responsibility to explain the reaction or lack thereof of the spectators, it would seem that each of the onlookers who have witnessed the Kitty Genovese’s murder and the hit-and-run of Yueyue thought that someone else would do something to assist the victim, and other people could be the ones to get involved. The observer’s sense of responsibility to give support decreases when they are part of a larger group in comparison to having a single person to bear 100% of the responsibility to act in an emergency situation.

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There are some conditions where the bystander effect can be decreased or doesn’t apply, such as when a person is in a leadership role or someone who works in a helping occupation. For example, in one of my previous flights going back to Manila, an emergency situation happened mid-flight -- one of the passengers is experiencing a mild stroke. The flight attendants informed the other passengers that someone is in need of urgent medical attention and asked if there’s anyone who works in a medical profession who can assist in the current situation. Surprisingly, there are couple of folks who stood up and volunteered to be of assistance and they all work from various fields – nurse, physical therapist, pharmacist, and even medical students. Due to the confined space, right there and then they have also discussed and decided that based on their experience and expertise, the most suitable group to help are the nurses and the medical students and the rest are on standby in case they needed additional hands.

While the bystander effect describes when people take part in an altruistic behavior or choose not to, the frustration-aggression hypothesis on the other hand, illustrates what are the situational influences on aggression. In their 1939 book entitled Frustration and Aggression, psychologists Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, and Sears proposed this theory that frustration often leads to some form of aggression and all aggression is caused by frustration. (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, 2017) It is worth noting that frustration here is not referred to as an emotional experience, but rather, an event that interferes or blocks a person’s goal. Simply put, the frustration-aggression hypothesis explains that when a person’s goal is blocked, their frustration is highly possible to turn to an aggressive behavior. For example, an employee in a company is aspiring to get a promotion at work. However, his goal is blocked when another team member got the promotion instead of him. His blocked goal will then lead to a frustration which is often released in a form of an aggressive act such as screaming, yelling, indifference towards the other employee, or even engaging in a physical fight.

In Singapore, the state coroner found on June 20, 2019 that a woman stabbed her husband to death with knives on both hands, in front of their daughter and she later took on her own life. According to the article published in Today Online, the couple identified as Filipino nationals were having marriage woes and that the husband wished to divorce his wife. Prior to this, it was mentioned that the couple were having relationship problems due to the husband often working late and the wife gets upset because of his absence at home. At one point, the wife already tried to kill herself but the husband and their daughter were able to persuade her to stop. (Tang, 2019) To explain what circumstances lead to the wife to kill both herself and her husband using the frustration-aggression hypothesis, first step is to identify what is the goal. In this context we can assume that the wife’s goal is to get the attention of her husband. However, that goal is blocked when the husband often worked late and stays away from home. Naturally, the wife felt upset and frustrated so they started to have marital spats at first. As the frustration of the wife increases, her acts of aggression also escalated -- she started calling him at work every day, then she threatened to kill herself by holding a knife on her wrist, and eventually, upon learning that the husband wanted to have a divorce, she killed him with knives on both her hands and jumped off the building to kill herself afterwards. What could have possibly been changed in this story to prevent the demise of these unfortunate couple? I would say, when the wife first manifests her aggressive behavior by having a fight with her husband, if her act had been successful and probably, she got more time and attention from her husband, then she would have felt good and her frustration had been released. However, her aggression failed and this resulted to further frustration.

Although the tragic case above is a good illustration of how frustration leads to aggression, not all examples of aggressive behavior can be rationalized by this hypothesis. For example, not everyone who experienced frustration or blockage exhibits aggressive responses. Whether and how a person will aggress is also determined by his or her higher-order processing of information, self-control, and moral values. If he or she believes that an aggressive act is inappropriate in a certain situation and the potential cost of his or her actions are too high, he or she will refrain from acting aggressively. In an office situation for instance, if a toxic boss scolds and yells at his staff during a meeting the odds of the staff to engage in a heated argument and shout back at his or her boss is very low knowing the potential consequences if he or she retaliates – either he or she will get reprimanded or worse, he or she can lose the job.

Another exception to this theory is when an individual display aggression even when there is no obvious obstacle to cause frustration such as when they are intoxicated, using alcohol or other abused substances, and their higher-order cognition and self-control mechanisms are impaired. A classic example would be a group of friends in a bar who just had way too much to drink and started to pick fights with another person in their circle or from another group over some silly reasons such as, the other person was giving a death stare or that the other group are laughing way too loud. Because of alcohol intoxication, the person’s executive functioning is weakened and is therefore more prone to focus on perceived provocation and is more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior. Failure to process the possible consequences of reacting aggressively can potentially result to injury, damage to properties and fines, or jail time.