The Bystander Effect is about more than the diffusion of responsibility

Inspired by the shocking murder of a woman in New York in 1964, reportedly in front of numerous witnesses who did nothing to help (although this was exaggerated), the Bystander Effect is a well-researched phenomenon that describes the diminishing likelihood that any one person will help as the number of other people available to help increases.The most popular and widely researched explanation is that people experience a diffusion of responsibility when in the company of other bystanders. We don't help the person who is being assaulted in a busy street because we assume that someone else will.But a new study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General provides evidence that there is much more to it than this – in particular, when deciding whether to help, we take into account the perspective of the other bystanders – whether they know that help is needed, whether they know that we know that help is needed, whether they know that we know they know that help is needed, and so on.Kyle Thomas at Harvard University and his colleagues, including the psychologist and best-selling author Steven Pinker, say their findings show that "...the bystander effect has a major strategic component, rather than being an irrational anomaly in our moral psychology, and that it is driven by mentalising ... about the knowledge of other bystanders, rather than only being sensitive to their presence or absence".The researchers recruited over 2,000 volunteers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk surv...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Source Type: blogs