30 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
30 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Bystander effect"
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chunk: 3/8
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect"
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category: "reference"
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tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T15:56:57.355289+00:00"
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instance: "kb-cron"
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---
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Direct intervention: directly assisting the victim
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Detour intervention. Detour intervention refers to reporting an emergency to the authorities (i.e. the police, fire department)
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Implementation:
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After going through steps 1–4, the bystander must implement the action.
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In one study done by Abraham S. Ross, the effects of increased responsibility on bystander intervention were studied by increasing the presence of children. This study was based on the reaction of 36 male undergraduates presented with emergency situations. The prediction was that the intervention would be at its peak due to presence of children around those 36 male undergraduate participants. This was experimented and showed that the prediction was not supported, and was concluded as "the type of study did not result in significant differences in intervention."
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A meta-analysis (2011) of the bystander effect reported that "The bystander effect was attenuated when situations were perceived as dangerous (compared with non-dangerous), perpetrators were present (compared with non-present), and the costs of intervention were physical (compared with non-physical). This pattern of findings is consistent with the arousal-cost-reward model, which proposes that dangerous emergencies are recognized faster and more clearly as real emergencies, thereby inducing higher levels of arousal and hence more helping." They also "identified situations where bystanders provide welcome physical support for the potentially intervening individual and thus reduce the bystander effect, such as when the bystanders were exclusively male, when they were naive rather than passive confederates or only virtually present persons, and when the bystanders were not strangers."
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An alternative explanation has been proposed by Stanley Milgram, who hypothesized that the bystanders' callous behavior was caused by the strategies they had adopted in daily life to cope with information overload. This idea has been supported to varying degrees by empirical research.
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Timothy Hart and Ternace Miethe used data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and found that a bystander was present in 65 percent of the violent victimizations in the data. Their presence was most common in cases of physical assaults (68%), which accounted for the majority of these violent victimizations and less likely in robberies (49%) and sexual assaults (28%). The actions of bystanders were most frequently judged by victims as "neither helping nor hurting" (48%), followed by "helping" (37%), "hurting" (10%), and "both helping and hurting" (3%). Half of the attacks in which a bystander was present occurred in the evening, where the victim and bystander were strangers.
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==== Ambiguity and consequences ====
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Ambiguity is one factor that affects whether or not a person assists another in need. In some cases of high ambiguity, it can take a person or group up to five times as long before taking action than in cases of low ambiguity. In these cases, bystanders determine their own safety before proceeding. Bystanders are more likely to intervene in low ambiguity, insignificant consequence situations than in high ambiguity, significant consequence situations.
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Latané and Rodin (1969) suggested that in ambiguous situations, bystanders may look to one another for guidance, and misinterpret others' lack of initial response as a lack of concern. This causes each bystander to decide that the situation is not serious.
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==== Understanding of environment ====
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Whether or not a bystander intervenes may have to do with their familiarity of the environment where the emergency occurs. If the bystander is familiar with the environment, they are more likely to know where to get help, where the exits are, etc. Bystanders who are in an environment in which they are not familiar with the surroundings are less likely to give help in an emergency situation.
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==== Priming the bystander effect ====
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Research done by Garcia et al. (2002) indicate that priming a social context may inhibit helping behavior. Imagining being around one other person or being around a group of people can affect a person's willingness to help.
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==== Cohesiveness and group membership ==== |