The Bystander Effect: How Big Is to Big of a Group?

Walking along the busy street of Manhattan, Katie becomes light headed passing out; although she is in a large group of people, no one stops to help. This phenomenon is called the “bystander effect.” A bystander is often anyone who passed by, witnessed, or even participated in a certain situation (Polanin, Espelage & Pigott, 2012). The bystander effect is the idea that the larger the group, the less likely an individual is to be helped. The likelihood of someone getting helped is inversely compared to the number of people who are around witnessing the event at the time. This phenomenon has played a huge role in the increase of civilians failing to be helped in the past years, and is starting to have more light shined upon it. Knowledge of the role of a bystander now has more public awareness (Fischer et al., 2011). The bystander effect has acted as a doorway to many things, and situations such as bullying, and gang violence. Most people have been in situations where they were either a bystander or a victim of no bystander intervention. The typical person falls victim to the bystander effect because of people feeling the need to conform to a group, self- efficacy, and the belief that responsibility will transfer to another individual.

On the South Side of Chicago in 1984, a high school basketball player, Ben Wilson, was murder walking his girlfriend home after school. Many people witnessed this event, but since no one else was being proactive in getting helped it took hours before medical help was called, and Ben died while he waited. The need to conform to a group is present in all individuals. Even when someone knows they need to aid someone else, if they notice everyone else not doing so they will follow the majority’s lead. No...

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...to intervene, so they do not get involved at all.

The bystander effect has gotten a lot of grief over the years. Many refuse to believe that people could be that selfish, scared, and that worried about fitting in, but research shows a high percentage of individuals falling under the qualifications of a passive bystander, a person who does not intervene at all. Bystanders are not bad people by far. Studies show that people chose not to intervene because of high levels of anxiety, and feelings of insecurity (Polanin, Espelage & Pigott, 2012). In contrast, the effect of bystander intervention has started to increase over the years compared to that of traditional research (Fischer et al., 2011). It is not that people do not want to help others, it is that before helping someone many variables are took into account, and some of these variable result the bystander effect