On January 21, 2006 Ilan Halimi was kidnapped in Paris by at least 20 Moroccan's and tortured for 24 days. Many people in the apartment complex that he had been taken to had heard the commotion and many came to watch the gruesome torture. No one ever called the police and Halimi died on February 13, 2006. This is a violent example of the bystander effect. Halimi's life could have easily been saved if any one of the neighbor's in the apartment had called the cops.
One explanation for the bystander effect is that people feel the "need to behave in correct and socially acceptable ways." What this means is that when people see that nobody else is reacting to the situation, they feel that it may be inappropriate to do something about the situation. Another explanation for the bystander effect is "diffusion of responsibility." This just means that the more people that are witnessing an event, the less likely an individual feels that it is their responsibility to act because the responsibility is shared among all those present. All of the neighbors in Halimi's case heard all of the commotion but did not call the police because they thought probably thought that somebody else will call the police and it is not their responsibility. The bystander effect is a terrible thing especially if someone's life could be saved if someone would just take action and help them.
More Is Not Always Better
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I definitely think there is a problem with the whole bystander effect. It is interesting to see how common it is. But in cases like Halimi's it ended in a tragedy that could have been prevented. No one thinks that something terrible will come of it in the end so they do not do anything. When in reality doing nothing can do more harm than something. I think society has to work to decrease the bystander affect, for everyone's own good.
There is another account of the bystander effect where there was a women that was being followed and then, unfortunately, was beaten and raped across the street from here apartment complex. There were roughly 24 witnesses to this event, yet there were no attempts to contact a form of help. Later when some of the witnesses were interviewed, they said "I figured someone else must have called already.": this is a prime example of the bystander effect as well. Hopefully as people become aware of this effect they will be more apt to help in a situation like this.
Ever since we started learning about the bystander effect I have made a conscience effort to observe not only myself, but others as well, is any social situations. I have seen repeatedly that people will turn a blind eye to things that are obviously a violation of some rules, yet they allow someone to go on and pretend to have no knowledge of it. I admit that I am guilty of this myself, but I cannot understand how anyone could ignore certain terrible acts to blatantly. If more people were to step up, things would be a little different in this world.
I think the bystander effect is one of the most frightening concepts of social psychology. It is hard to fathom that so many people could witness a gruesome event and remain inactive. However, evaluating my own experiences in both groups and alone, I can see where the bystander effect may be relevant even to me. I remember a time during passing period in high school when a student dropped her books and papers all over the ground, but because the hallway was crowded, no one - including me- stopped to help. By contrast, whenever I have witnessed someone drop something and I am one of the only people around, I am more inclined to pick it up for them. As the textbook describes, I likely feel more accountability to help when I am one of the only people that could be relied on.
I think the main reason of the bystander effect is that when people only watch a situation, they often don't think of the worst case scenario. If they did, I feel that more people would help.
I find the bystander effect fascinating and horrifying all at once. It's really interesting, though, to put yourself in those shoes. As awful as that sounds... I know that I've been in situations (of course, not quite to the level of the Halimi story, thank goodness) where I have thought, "Oh, well someone else has probably already done something..." I really, really hope that in such a gruesome situation I would actually do something, though. I like to think so.