How Diffusion of Responsibility Affects Group Behavior. Diffusion of responsibility is a psychological phenomenon in which people are less likely to take action when in the presence of a large group of people.1 For example, imagine that you are in a large city on a bustling street.
You notice a man fall to the ground and start convulsing as if having a seizure. Many people turn and look at the man, but no one moves to help or call for medical assistance. Why? Because there are so many people present, no one person feels pressured to respond. This situation is often used to explain the bystander effect, which suggests that the greater the number of people present, the less likely people are to help a person in distress.
Darley and Latané on Diffusion of Responsibility In a series of classic experiments conducted in the late 1960s, researchers John Darley and Bibb Latané asked participants to fill out questionnaires in a room which suddenly began to fill with smoke.2. Diffusion of Responsibility - Ethics Unwrapped. Diffusion of responsibility occurs when people who need to make a decision wait for someone else to act instead.
The more people involved, the more likely it is that each person will do nothing, believing someone else from the group will probably respond. Psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané set up an experiment where a distress call made it appear that a person nearby had suffered an injury. When subjects heard the cry, and thought they were the only ones who heard it, 85% of them helped. But if subjects thought there was another person who heard the call too, only 62% helped.
And if subjects thought that four other people also heard the cry for help, just 31% took action. Diffusion of responsibility makes people feel less pressure to act because they believe, correctly or incorrectly, that someone else will do so. So, in this way, diffusion of responsibility keeps us from paying attention to our own conscience.
Diffusion of Responsibility: Definition, Theory. Kitty Genovese. The Kitty Genovese murder in Queens, New York, in 1964 is one of the most famous murder cases to come out of New York City and into the national spotlight.
What propelled it wasn’t the crime or the investigation, but the press coverage that alleged the murder had many witnesses who refused to come to the Kitty Genovese’s defense. This has been disproved over time, but not before it became part of the accepted lore of the crime. Kitty Genovese was returning from work home at around 2:30 a.m. on March 13, 1964, when she was approached by a man with a knife. Genovese ran toward her apartment building front door, and the man grabbed her and stabbed her while she screamed.
A neighbor, Robert Mozer, yelled out his window, “Let that girl alone!” Genovese, seriously injured, crawled to the rear of her apartment building, out of the view of any possible witnesses. She was found by neighbor Sophia Farrar, who screamed for someone to call the police. Kitty Genovese. The 21st century bystander effect happens every day online. If you’re going to fall, injure yourself and need help, where is a good place to do it?
Should you choose a busy thoroughfare or a deserted backstreet? Statistics and experiments in social psychology will tell you that if you need help, you should avoid dropping in a busy street, even if hundreds of people are passing through. This is because of a phenomenon known as the bystander effect. The more individuals gathered in one place, the less chance there is of one of them coming to the aid of a person in need. When an emergency situation occurs, it’s more likely that someone will come to the rescue if there are fewer or almost no witnesses. And in the 21st century, when our thoroughfares are online and on social networks, millions of people are effectively passing each other by every minute.
The presence of other people has long been shown to give rise to confusion about responsibility. Singaporean Eye Power (feat. Steven Lim) SG Chain Movement - Case Film. Be an Active Bystander. THE BYSTANDER EFFECT. Empathy.