How can we become more responsible and become the first bystander to act?

This article was originally published in The Conversation. It was written by Professor Wayne Eastman.

The most powerful evidence for the prosecution at the trial of Derek Chauvin was a video showing the then-Minneapolis police officer pinning a pleading George Floyd to the ground by kneeling on his neck until he grew silent and then died.

On the witness stand, the teenager who captured the incident on her smartphone, 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, expressed regret for not doing more on the day of the crime.

As a professor whose major field of research is the application of psychology and game theory to ethics, I believe that Frazier’s regret about not physically intervening illuminates two major points: First, a witness to a troubling situation who is in a group may feel a lesser sense of personal responsibility than a single individual. Second, someone in a group of people who can see one another may nonetheless feel responsible to act.

The sense of diminished personal responsibility for people in a group has become known as the “bystander effect” – a phenomenon first described in the wake of a celebrated, infamous case.

In a 1964 front-page story headlined “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police; Apathy at Stabbing of Queens Woman Shocks Inspector,” The New York Times related the gruesome story of the middle-of-the-night sexual assault and murder of Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender, near her apartment building.

In recent years, academics and The New York Times itself have concluded that the report had significant errors – the number of witnesses was fewer than 37 and multiple people phoned the police.

Reflecting on the notorious case long before these errors were known, social psychologists Bibb Latane and John Darley wondered if it would be possible to study failure of bystanders to act in lab experiments.

In a 1970 book, Darley and Latane summarized that the chances of any one individual acting in a pro-social or helpful way is lower when responsibility is diffused among a number of people. Subsequent studies also confirmed that individuals are more likely to act when they feel they have the sole responsibility to do so.

The bystander effect has been reformulated by game theorists as the “volunteer’s dilemma.” In the volunteer’s dilemma, a person, or a group of people, will avoid discomfort if any one of them takes a pro-social action with a small cost, such as performing first aid or fixing a clogged drain.

Any one individual acting alone has good reason to take action – but if there is a crowd of, say, 20 people, the chance that they will do nothing and let someone else volunteer goes up.

In the case of George Floyd, the bystander effect was complicated by the power dynamics at play. Chauvin was an armed white police officer, and Frazier and the other bystanders were unarmed civilians who were mostly Black, like George Floyd himself. Given that, it is reasonable to ask whether Frazier, if she had been the sole civilian witness, would have gone beyond recording a video to physically intervene – such as trying to pull Chauvin off Floyd.

And it is also reasonable to ask whether she or any bystander should physically intervene in a situation where doing so might be extremely risky.

The term bystander effect refers to the tendency for people to be inactive in high danger situations due to the presence of other bystanders (Darley & Latané, 1968; Latané & Darley, 1968, 1970; Latané & Nida, 1981). Thus, people tend to help more when alone than in a group.

The implications for this theory have been widely studied by a variety of researchers, but initial interest in this phenomenon arose after the brutal murder of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese in 1964.

Through a series of experiments beginning the 1960s and 1970s, the bystander effect phenomenon has become more widely understood.

Kitty Genovese

Kitty Genovese

On the morning of March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese returned to her apartment complex, at 3 am, after finishing her shift at a local bar.

After parking her car in a lot adjacent to her apartment building, she began walking the short distance to the entrance, which was located at the back of the building.

As she walked, she noticed a figure at the far end of the lot. She shifted directions and headed towards a different street, but the man followed and seized her.

As she yelled, neighbors from the apartment building went to the window and watched as he stabbed her. A man from the apartment building yelled down “Let that girl alone!” (New York Times, 1964).

Following this, the assailant appeared to have left, but once the lights from the apartments turned off, the perpetrator returned and stabbed Kitty Genovese again. Once again, the lights came on and the windows opened driving the assaulter away from the scene.

Unfortunately, the assailant returned and stabbed Catherine Genovese for the final time. The first call to the police came in at 3:50 am and the police arrived in two minutes.

When the neighbors were asked why they did not intervene or call the police earlier, some answers were “I didn't want to get involved”; “Frankly, we were afraid”; “I was tired. I went back to bed.” (New York Times, 1964).

After this initial report, the case was launched into nationwide attention with various leaders commenting on the apparent “moral decay” of the country.

In response to these claims, Darley and Latané set out to find an alternative explanation.

Decision Model of Helping

Decision Model of Helping

Latané & Darley (1970) formulated a five-stage model to explain why bystanders at emergencies sometimes do and sometimes do not offer help.

At each stage in the model the answer ‘No’ results in no help being given, while the answer ‘yes’ leads the individual closer to offering help.

However, they argued that helping responses may be inhibited at any stage of the process. For example, the bystander may not notice the situation or the situation may be ambiguous and not readily interpretable as an emergency.

What is the most important thing to consider before you decide to act as a bystander?

What is the first step required for bystanders to take action in a situation?

Why are bystanders responsible?

Who is responsible for the bystander effect?