The Bystander Effect the Richmond High School Incident Oct. 30, 2009 — -- Members of the Richmond, Calif., community were stunned by the alleged rape and assault of a high school student after a school dance last Saturday. But a nationwide news audience was even more astonished by allegations that about 20 people in the immediate area observed about 10 men and boys gang rape and beat the 15-year-old girl for two-and-a-half hours on the Richmond High School campus and did not contact authorities. Psychology experts say the incident, if it occurred as described, may have been the result of escalating wildness facilitated by an isolated, heavily male environment. "If one of the boys or men grabbed her and pulled her toward him ... and somebody else did something else so it became more and more sexual in nature ... we now have a [group of boys] who are pretty wild," said John Darley, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University. "Each act licensed what had gone before, and it also made more likely what came next."
Diffusion of Responsibility: Definition and Examples in Psychology What causes people to intervene and help others? Psychologists have found that people are sometimes less likely to help out when there are others present, a phenomenon known as the bystander effect. One reason the bystander effect occurs is due to diffusion of responsibility: when others are around who could also help, people may feel less responsible for helping. Key Takeaways: Diffusion of Responsibility Diffusion of responsibility occurs when people feel less responsibility for taking action in a given situation, because there are other people who could also be responsible for taking action.In a famous study on diffusion of responsibility, people were less likely to help someone having a seizure when they believed there were others present who also could have helped.Diffusion of responsibility is especially likely to happen in relatively ambiguous situations. Famous Research on Diffusion of Responsibility Diffusion of Responsibility in Everyday Life Why We Don’t Help
Bystander effect Diffusion of Responsibility Edison Electrocutes an Elephant Topsy the elephant was electrocuted at Luna Park Zoo on Coney Island in 1903. Captured on film by Thomas Edison, the event was one of a string of animal electrocutions Edison staged to discredit a new form of electricity: alternating current. __1903:__Thomas Edison stages his highly publicized electrocution of an elephant in order to demonstrate the dangers of alternating current, which, if it posed any immediate danger at all, was to Edison's own direct current. Edison had established direct current at the standard for electricity distribution and was living large off the patent royalties, royalties he was in no mood to lose when George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla showed up with alternating current. Edison's aggressive campaign to discredit the new current took the macabre form of a series of animal electrocutions using AC (a killing process he referred to snidely as getting "Westinghoused"). Stray dogs and cats were the most easily obtained, but he also zapped a few cattle and horses.
3 psychological factors were attributed to bystander... Variables affecting bystanders Pluralistic Ignorance