Essay On Bystander Effect

OVERCOMING THE BYSTANDER EFFECT- BE THE CHANGE

We have all been in situations where we saw someone being bullied on the street and did nothing to stop it, or driven past a car stranded on the side of the road but did not intervene because we assume the drivers behind us will eventually stop to help, or when we see litter on the road and assumed someone else will pick it up. Our usual reaction when we see a problem is to respond by doing nothing. We hold ourselves back. We become BYSTANDERS. I cannot help but wonder… why don’t we help others when we witness such situations? Why do we hold our morals back and do nothing? Every single day, we remain bystanders not just to the people who need our help, but to numerous political, social and environmental problems that we should be concerned about, but instead feel helpless and powerless to face it and do something about it. This paper will discuss the few reasons why we fall victim to the bystander effect, how crowds influence our decision to help, why some people help while others don’t, as well as ways to become an active bystander.

“The bystander is a modern archetype, from the Holocaust to the genocide in Rwanda to the current environmental crisis,” says Charles Garfield, who is a clinical professor of psychology at the University of California in San Francisco who is currently writing a book on the psychological differences between bystanders and the people who show moral courage. Garfield questioned why some people respond to the crisis around them while others don’t. Researchers have spent decades trying to answer Garfield’s question and their research suggests that we humans fall into either of the two categories: Bystanders vs. the morally courageous people and very subtle de...

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...our hands, the people around us, and the way we perceive the victim and so on. But, these findings also force us to see how we perform under pressure; they show us that Kitty Genovese’s neighbors might have faced the same dilemma. What’s more frightening is that it makes it easier for us to understand how the good people in Nazi Germany and Rwanda stayed silent against the cruelty and mass murders that happened around them. Apart from being afraid, confused, coerced or unaware, these people could still convince themselves that it was not their personal responsibility to intervene and save the victims. We can overcome this bystander effect by understanding and educating ourselves about the forces that push us to become passive bystanders, and when a situation arises, we learn to overcome those reasons and take action, thus becoming the much needed active bystanders.