Social psychological phenomenon in which individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when others are

present.

•Most famous case of the bystander effect ever

Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in 1964. The murder continued for half an hour while thirty-eight

bystanders watched without intervening or notifying the police.

The Holocaust is a great example of the bystander effect because the towns and cities near the

concentration camps knew fully well of the atrocities and horror inside the camps. These citizens could smell

the camps from as far as twenty miles away before finding them. Therefore, the mayhem could not be ignored. The populations made no effort to stop the torture, yet they were forced to clean up the corpses

and bury them in mass graves.

[Germans] were also victims of cultural ethical relativism, believing that if their government thought that [genocide] was ethically relative behavior in their culture, then they should comply.

In other cases, with more people, individuals are less likely to take responsibility. They assume that someone else will intervene.

(1991) Philosophical Ethics, An Introduction to Moral Philosophy, Second Edition

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—

because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out

— because I was not a socialist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me—

and there was no one left to speak out for me."

Martin Niemöller

1. Bystanders know one another.2. Witnesses have special bond to the victim.3. Bystanders think that the victim is

especially dependent on them.4. Bystanders have considerable training in

emergency intervention.5. Witnesses have knowledge of the bystander

effect.

Researchers stage an emergency situation to test the bystander effect.

Examples of these situations include epileptic seizures, women falling and becoming injured, or smoke pouring from an air vent. Once they have staged a condition they measure how long it takes until participants or bystanders intervene.

Results to these experiments almost always conclude that the presence of others restrains the willingness to help.

“If you are in a crowd and you look and see that everyone is doing

nothing, then nothing becomes the norm.”

Drew Carberry, A director on the National Counsel of Crime Prevention