A fascinating part of psychology is the idea that safety in numbers is just a myth. I was astounded to learn that it doesn't help to have more people near you in the scene of an accident. Three factors transforming witnesses into oblivious bystanders are the bystander effect, pluralistic ignorance, and diffusion of responsibility. The bystander effect describes the feeling of being frozen in place despite a desire to help. Pluralistic ignorance causes a person to believe that he or she is the only one that sees the situation in a frightening way. So when a person with pluralistic ignorance sees an emergency when nobody else is reacting to it, he or she thinks that there must be nothing amiss. The final factor, diffusion of responsibility, describes the feeling that one is less responsible for another person's misfortune if others are around to share the blame. This is troubling but true, that even I am less willing to help another just because I am less likely to be blamed if I don't. It seems like people should help others regardless of whether they will be blamed if they don't. The fact that this isn't true shows the laziness in human nature.
Blog #4: Safety in Small Groups
I agree completely. There are times in everyone's life i'm sure where something has worried you but you don't want to make a scene just in case it's not really what it looks like. It is absolutely shocking how many people will stand by and watch something horrible happen or something of the sort just because they might be judged by other people in the community or in the situation. It begs the question what would I do if a serious emergency came up or something that was attention pressing. It's awful to think that most people fall victim to these factors and you start to hope that you would not be one of those people.
I'm really grateful for having learned this, because I think (and the textbook confirms) that I will be more likely, now, to help out in a situation where a person who hadn't learned this might not help. I like to think that this knowledge has made me a more useful and helpful member of society.
I don't really agree with your last statements saying that it comes down to laziness and less of a likely hood of being blamed. I'm not disagreeing that the fact of diffusion of responsibility (because it is clearly true) but some of the cases I think it may just be a communication error that no one will take responsibility because with that many people there someone already thinks the responsibility has been taken care of.