After looking at the chapters surrounding social psychology, i found the most interesting topic to be prosocial behavior. Prosocial behavior is behavior that involves helping and cooperating with other people. Researchers often look at why people help others, as well as why they sometimes refuse to help or cooperate. The bystander effect really stood out to me as an interesting "social phenomenon" involved with the subject. The bystander effect is the phenomenon that refers to situations where individuals do not offer any sort of help in an emergency situation to a victim when other people are present. One would imagine that the more people that are present in a given emergency situation, the more likely that someone would help.
After reading more about this effect, i found that the presence of other bystanders greatly decreases any sort of intervention. This happens because as the number of bystanders increases, any given bystander is less likely to interpret the incident as a problem, and less likely to assume responsibility for taking action. The following youtube link is a study conducted by a news station showing the true colors of the bystander effect. They have an actor lay on the ground in a very public place acting like he is really sick. Hundreds of people pass this man with only a sympathetic look while he lies in pain asking for help. Eventually after 20 minutes have passed, someones came up to him and offered help. I find it really disheartening that humans aren't concerned enough with the well being of our own kind to reach out and offer help because it would be an inconvenience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsPfbup0ac
I know how you feel, recently I saw a bicyclist on campus take a fall when he was rounding a corner and it was a hard one. I was a couple of hundred feet away and expected at least someone to stop and help him or at least ask if he was alright. To my surprise people just looked and kept walking. I was just ready to run and help when the guy jumped up and got back on his bike and was gone. Still I was surprised and peoples reactions I expected people to help and not just ignore another person.