This occurs whilst in the company of other people who are also not helping. In the example, the teenage girl (victim) in the event has experienced a bystander effect. The bystander effect occurs due to many reasons; which will be discussed in this essay.
Altruism is a selfless form of prosocial behaviour whereby the recipient is not expected to give any reward to the person who helped them (Feinberg, 1978). For example, an elderly lady has dropped change on the floor, so one steps in to help. (Stukas, 2012). If a witness had stepped in to help the teenage victim, this would be an act of altruism as they are doing it for purely selfless reasons (to help another out of an emergency).
Latane & Darley (1968) suggested that in bystander effect, the first action to complete is to decide whether an emergency is actually taking place. It may be hard to differentiate where the screams are coming from and if they are serious (Batson, Lange, Ahmad & Lishner as cited by Hogg & Cooper, 2003). If nearby individuals did not view the scene (because they were not near to it), they may have interpreted the screams from afar made by the teenager as non-serious. This may have been because screams for help are sometimes made as a joke by teenagers.
Background noises could have interfered with the first step: people may have not heard the screaming at all or misheard it as a baby crying instead (Batson, Lange, Ahmad & Lishner as cited by Hogg & Cooper, 2003). On a busy Saturday, many families would have been around and people that day would expect to hear babies crying. People would not have expected to hear a teenager crying for help so therefore the witnesses would presume it is a baby crying and not a teenager. A baby crying is not viewed as an emergency (unless it is our child that is screaming (Tyson & Sobchak, 1994)) and thus are not likely to react. Moreover, the busy Saturday context would add more visual and auditory information to attend to. This would override the first step of interpreting the event as an emergency which is a argument from the bystander effect. People close by are therefore less likely to move from their current position to go closer to examine the occurring event. Therefore, the witnesses would not see the teenager being attacked and interpret it as serious.
In emergency situations, Latane & Darley (1968) also suggested that individuals will look towards others for assistance and guidance on how to act. If others do not appear to be helping (which was the case as it took ten minutes for someone to intervene in the example), then we will further believe the event is not serious, and thus will not help accordingly.
Bommel, Prooijen, Elffers & Lange (2016) provided evidence for the powerful effect which groups have. Participants viewed an Internet Forum whereby someone had posted about feeling depressed or had recently gone through a breakup. On the page, it displayed how many people had viewed the page (between zero views and 30 views). The researchers found that participants were less likely to reply to the message if it had 30 views. This shows that if no one else is responding, the participant felt that they did not need to either. This not only shows that individuals look towards others for assistance, but also look towards others to see if there is a norm. The other viewers in this study created a group norm in which individuals are not helping because they are following the role (of not responding) put forth by others.
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This idea loans itself to the example assault. The notion of others not helping the teenager created an environment whereby people are acting calm as if nothing is going on. This in turn created a group norm whereby it is not necessary to help as it is not viewed an emergency. Also noted in the exemplar, the victim claimed that she witnessed two people recording the event: mocking it. This adds to the assumption that the event is not an emergency. These two individuals act as influencers and would create a norm for nearby individuals who would as a result believe it is not an emergency (Barsade & Gibson, 2012).
Group influences are extremely influential: Hortensius & Gelder (2014) presented an emergency event to an individual. The group size was either large or small. The study found that the brain (in the left medial frontal gyrus and left postcentral and precentral gyri) showed a decrease in activity when the size of a group during the emergency increased. This research shows that the presence of others decreases our likelihood to respond. Fight or flight (Oster, 2015) responses would be inactive if the group size is large, thus individuals can leave the current situation without feeling immoral. Witnesses may not have helped in the example as they believed that the group of people around them was large enough and another person would have intervened (Latane & Darley, 1968).
Latane & Darley (1968) argued diffusion of responsibility is when individuals do not feel they are obliged to intervene as they believe that other people would intervene. This would have played a role as others were present, therefore shoppers would feel they are not responsible for the teenager if she was hurt by the attack (Meier & Hinsz, 2003).
Katz and Allport (1931) established a linked term known as pluralistic ignorance. Latane & Darley (1968) who proposed the bystander effect used this term too. Bjerring, Hansen & Pederson (2014) expanded upon the term. This is when a person has seemingly different attitude than everyone else towards a certain event. They believe that they should be acting differently than they are. Each person acts opposing to this internal attitude and incorrectly accepts that everyone else is responding in the accurate way to the event. In the example, people may have experienced pluralistic ignorance as they felt due to others not responding, they should have responded in the same way (by not taking any action). Even though others in the situation may have also believed that they should have intervened with the assault taking place.
Brener, Hippel, Horwitz & Hamwood (2015) found evidence for pluralistic ignorance. Among health-care workers, individuals answered a questionnaire about whether they believe harm reduction services (HRS: a programme which aims to reduce the harms of psychoactive drugs) should be used. Participants themselves reported positive attitudes towards HRS. They perceived their colleagues to hold less favourable views towards HRS, consequently demonstrating pluralistic ignorance as they believed that their view was not part of the majority. Therefore, they would not speak positively to other health-care workers about HRS. In the example, people were happy to accept the majority and not partake in any actions to get help for the teenage victim as they believe that no one else deemed the situation as an emergency.
Stereotypes are held against teenagers for getting into trouble. Nearby witnesses may have interpreted the event as something which regularly occurs within young adults’ lives (Sharpe, 2009). People may have viewed the situation as play fighting if it included teenagers. In particular, teenage girls are now called “ladette” if they are seemingly partaking into violent behaviours usually partaken by their male counterparts (Worrall (2004). When viewing this situation, people may stereotype this female as being part of this group, and behaviours displayed by her is typical for a female of her age and believe that it is not an emergency. The victim in the situation may be a “ladette” and partake in violent activities a lot of the time so one does not wish to involve themselves in the activity because she may not be in as much danger as perceived. Due to the rising number of “ladettes” a stereotype for these individuals has been created (Sharpe, 2009) and thus people become desensitised to the notion of these people being in fights and similar situations (Carnagey, Anderson & Bushman, 2007).
To conclude, the bystander effect (Latane & Darley, 1968) includes many relevant factors which can be used to explain the reason why people failed to intervene in this specific example. Many people may have feared to do anything because others were acting calmly (pluralistic ignorance (Katz & Allport, 1931)). Group influences are very influential within these situations: given the busy Saturday on which the emergency occurred, witnesses would have believed that someone else would have intervened (Latane & Darley, 1968). Each of the factors detailed argue and collectively sum up many reasons why the nearby people did not intervene with the assault. Each of these factors intertwine and are linked.
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