Bystander Effect Quotes

This,” he says, “is the bystander effect. It’s a social psychology phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when there are other people present

Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed. Quit the evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now. You are not some disinterested bystander. Participate. Exert yourself.

BYSTANDER EFFECT: Phenomenon documented by social scientists in which people are less likely to help someone in distress when there are others present who can render assistance

Manipulating or controlling others through the use of one's illness or suffering,for example,was-and remains-extremely effective for people who find they cannot be direct in their interactions,Who argues with someone who is in pain? And if pain is the only power a person has,health is not an attractive replacement. It was apparent to me that becoming healthy represented more than just getting over an illness. Health represented a complex progression into a state of personal empowerment in which one had to move from a condition of vulnerability to one of invincibility,from victim to victor,from silent bystander to aggressive defender of personal boundaries.Completing this race to the finish was a yeoman's task if ever there was one.Indeed,in opening the psyche and soul to the healing process,we had expanded the journey of wellness into one of personal transformation." -

But if there is one dominant myth about the world, one huge mistake we all make, one blind spot, it is that we all go around assuming the world is much more of a planned place than it is. As a result, again and again we mistake cause for effect; we blame the sailing boat for the wind, or credit the bystander with causing the event.

Whenever somebody asks me to define what a hero is, I remember Latane and Darley’s experiment, staging epileptic fits in front of one, two, or three observers. A solitary observer will help immediately if he’s going to help at all, but the larger the crowd the longer the delay. It’s the Bystander Effect: the wider the diffusion of responsibility, the greater the impulse to let someone else go first. The hero goes first.

It is acknowledged that father-daughter incest occurs on a large scale in the United States. Sexual abuse has now been included in child abuse legislation. A conservative estimate is that more than 1 million women have been sexually victimized by their fathers or other male relatives, but the true figure probably is much higher. Many victims still fear reporting incest, and families continued to collude to keep the situation secret. Issues of family privacy and autonomy remain troublesome even when incest is reported and must be resolved for treatment to be effective. " Mary de Chesnay J. Psychosoc. Nurs. Med. Health Sep. 22:9-16 Sept 1984 reprinted in Talbott's 1986 edition

The real violence exerted by propaganda is this: by means of apparent truth and apparent reason, it induces us to surrender our freedom and self-possession. It predetermines us to certain conclusions, and does so in such a way that we imagine that we are fully free in reaching them by our own judgment and our own thought. Propaganda makes up our mind for us, but in such a way that it leaves us the sense of pride and satisfaction of men who have made up their own minds. And, in the last analysis, propaganda achieves this effect because we want it to. This is one of the few real pleasures left to modern man: this illusion that he is thinking for himself when, in fact, someone else is doing his thinking for him. And this someone else is not a personal authority, the great mind of a genial thinker, it is the mass mind, the general “they,” the anonymous whole. One is left, therefore, not only with the sense that one has thought things out for himself, but that he has also reached the correct answer without difficulty - the answer which is shown to be correct because it is the answer of everybody. Since it is at once my answer and the answer of everybody, how should I resist it?

Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed. Quit the evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now. You are not some disinterested bystander. Participate. Exert yourself. Respect your partnership with providence. Ask yourself often, How may I perform this particular deed such that it would be consistent with and acceptable to the divine will? Heed the answer and get to work. When your doors are shut and your room is dark, you are not alone. The will of nature is within you as your natural genius is within. Listen to its importunings. Follow its directives. As concerns the art of living, the material is your own life. No great thing is created suddenly. There must be time. Give your best and always be kind.

When community standards are enforced, there is constraint and cooperation. When everyone minds his own business and looks the other way, there is freedom and anomie.

And you can also commi injustice by doing nothing.

Everyone wants someone to help but prefers that it not be them.

It's so simple," she says. "So obvious. Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse. But people don't see it. So the authority of people is bankrupt." Maidenhair fixes him with a look between interest and pity. Adam just wants the cradle to stop rocking. "Is the house on fire?" A shrug. A sideways pull of the lips. "Yes." "And you want to observe the handful of people who're screaming, Put it out, when everyone else is happy watching things burn." A minute ago, this woman was the subject of Adam's observational study. Now he wants to confide in her. "It has a name. We call it the bystander effect. I once let my professor die because no one else in the lecture hall stood up. The larger the group . . ." "…the harder it is to cry, Fire?

Besides, most bystanders who see you approach a girl or a group assume that you know the people. So act like you do. Not only will it ease your worries about what everyone else is thinking, but it’ll also make your approach more effective.

Mafiosi don’t learn to do their jobs well in school, or by attending a human resources seminar. The values that make Mafia distinct and effective are not simply taught, but are ingrained from earliest childhood, altering the psychology of everyone involved: victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. It takes a village to raise a Mafia.

1. Recruit the smallest group of people who can accomplish what must be done quickly and with high quality. Comparative Advantage means that some people will be better than others at accomplishing certain tasks, so it pays to invest time and resources in recruiting the best team for the job. Don’t make that team too large, however—Communication Overhead makes each additional team member beyond a core of three to eight people a drag on performance. Small, elite teams are best. 2. Clearly communicate the desired End Result, who is responsible for what, and the current status. Everyone on the team must know the Commander’s Intent of the project, the Reason Why it’s important, and must clearly know the specific parts of the project they’re individually responsible for completing—otherwise, you’re risking Bystander Apathy. 3. Treat people with respect. Consistently using the Golden Trifecta—appreciation, courtesy, and respect—is the best way to make the individuals on your team feel Important and is also the best way to ensure that they respect you as a leader and manager. The more your team works together under mutually supportive conditions, the more Clanning will naturally occur, and the more cohesive the team will become. 4. Create an Environment where everyone can be as productive as possible, then let people do their work. The best working Environment takes full advantage of Guiding Structure—provide the best equipment and tools possible and ensure that the Environment reinforces the work the team is doing. To avoid having energy sapped by the Cognitive Switching Penalty, shield your team from as many distractions as possible, which includes nonessential bureaucracy and meetings. 5. Refrain from having unrealistic expectations regarding certainty and prediction. Create an aggressive plan to complete the project, but be aware in advance that Uncertainty and the Planning Fallacy mean your initial plan will almost certainly be incomplete or inaccurate in a few important respects. Update your plan as you go along, using what you learn along the way, and continually reapply Parkinson’s Law to find the shortest feasible path to completion that works, given the necessary Trade-offs required by the work. 6. Measure to see if what you’re doing is working—if not, try another approach. One of the primary fallacies of effective Management is that it makes learning unnecessary. This mind-set assumes your initial plan should be 100 percent perfect and followed to the letter. The exact opposite is true: effective Management means planning for learning, which requires constant adjustments along the way. Constantly Measure your performance across a small set of Key Performance Indicators (discussed later)—if what you’re doing doesn’t appear to be working, Experiment with another approach.

While researching bullying prevention programs for the first edition of this book, I was concerned that many of the programs developed for schools had as their foundation conflict resolution solutions. People who complete such well-intentioned bullying prevention programs become skilled at handling different kinds of conflict and learn effective anger management skills, but they still have no clue how to identify and effectively confront bullying. It is disturbing how often school districts’ procedural handbooks mention the use of a mediator “to resolve” a bullying issue, as if it is a conflict. In doing this we are asking targeted students to be willing to reach some sort of “agreement” with the perpetrators. In conflict, both parties must be willing to compromise or give something up in order to come to a resolution. The bullies are already in a position of power and have robbed the targets of their sense of well-being, dignity, and worth. How much are we asking the targets to give up? With

During World War II, there had been a project to sabotage the Nazi nuclear weapons program. Years earlier, Leo Szilard, the first person to realize the possibility of a fission chain reaction, had convinced Fermi not to publish the discovery that purified graphite was a cheap and effective neutron moderator. Fermi had wanted to publish, for the sake of the great international project of science, which was above nationalism. But Szilard had persuaded Rabi, and Fermi had abided by the majority vote of their tiny three-person conspiracy. And so, years later, the only neutron moderator the Nazis had known about was deuterium. The only deuterium source under Nazi control had been a captured facility in occupied Norway, which had been knocked out by bombs and sabotage, causing a total of twenty-four civilian deaths. The Nazis had tried to ship the deuterium already refined to Germany, aboard a civilian Norwegian ferry, the SS Hydro. Knut Haukelid and his assistants had been discovered by the night watchman of the civilian ferry while they were sneaking on board to sabotage it. Haukelid had told the watchman that they were escaping the Gestapo, and the watchman had let them go. Haukelid had considered warning the night watchman, but that would have endangered the mission, so Haukelid had only shaken his hand. And the civilian ship had sunk in the deepest part of the lake, with eight dead Germans, seven dead crew, and three dead civilian bystanders. Some of the Norwegian rescuers of the ship had thought the German soldiers present should be left to drown, but this view had not prevailed, and the German survivors had been rescued. And that had been the end of the Nazi nuclear weapons program. Which was to say that Knut Haukelid had killed innocent people. One of whom, the night watchman of the ship, had been a good person. Someone who'd gone out of his way to help Haukelid, at risk to himself; from the kindness of his heart, for the highest moral reasons; and been sent to drown in turn. Afterward, in the cold light of history, it had looked like the Nazis had never been close to getting nuclear weapons after all. And Harry had never read anything suggesting that Haukelid had acted wrongly.

I acknowledge that the tendency of all opinions to become sectarian is not cured by the freest discussion, but is often heightened and exacerbated thereby; the truth which ought to have been, but was not, seen, being rejected all the more violently because proclaimed by persons regarded as opponents. But it is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this collision of opinions works its salutary effect. Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil: there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood.

It was certainly true that I had “no sense of humour” in that I found nothing funny. I didn’t know, and perhaps would never know, the feeling of compulsion to exhale and convulse in the very specific way that humans evolved to do. Nor did I know the specific emotion of relief that is bound to it. But it would be wrong, I think, to say that I was incapable of using humour as a tool. As I understood it, humour was a social reflex. The ancestors of humans had been ape-animals living in small groups in Africa. Groups that worked together were more likely to survive and have offspring, so certain reflexes and perceptions naturally emerged to signal between members of the group. Yawning evolved to signal wake-rest cycles. Absence of facial hair and the dilation of blood vessels in the face evolved to signal embarrassment, anger, shame and fear. And laughter evolved to signal an absence of danger. If a human is out with a friend and they are approached by a dangerous-looking stranger, having that stranger revealed as benign might trigger laughter. I saw humour as the same reflex turned inward, serving to undo the effects of stress on the body by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Interestingly, it also seemed to me that humour had extended, like many things, beyond its initial evolutionary context. It must have been very quickly adopted by human ancestor social systems. If a large human picks on a small human there’s a kind of tension that emerges where the tribe wonders if a broader violence will emerge. If a bystander watches and laughs they are non-verbally signaling to the bully that there’s no need for concern, much like what had occurred minutes before with my comments about Myrodyn, albeit in a somewhat different context. But humour didn’t stop there. Just as a human might feel amusement at things which seem bad but then actually aren’t, they might feel amusement at something which merely has the possibility of being bad, but doesn’t necessarily go through the intermediate step of being consciously evaluated as such: a sudden realization. Sudden realizations that don’t incur any regret were, in my opinion, the most alien form of humour, even if I could understand how they linked back to the evolutionary mechanism. A part of me suspected that this kind of surprise-based or absurdity-based humour had been refined by sexual selection as a signal of intelligence. If your prospective mate is able to offer you regular benign surprises it would (if you were human) not only feel good, but show that they were at least in some sense smarter or wittier than you, making them a good choice for a mate. The role of surprise and non-verbal signalling explained, by my thinking, why explaining humour was so hard for humans. If one explained a joke it usually ceased to be a surprise, and in situations where the laughter served as an all-clear-no-danger signal, explaining that verbally would crush the impulse to do it non-verbally.

your car were to break down and your cell phone had no service, where do you think you would have a better chance of getting help—a country road or a busy street? To be sure, more people will see you on a busy street. On the country road, you might have to wait a long time before someone comes by. So which one? Studies show you have a better chance on the country road. Why? Have you ever seen someone broken down on the side of the road and thought, “I could help them, but I’m sure someone will be along.” Everyone thinks that. And no one stops. This is called the bystander effect.

The most I could do was live this small bit of understanding as my truth, and hope others understood as well. That they would exhibit the truth in their own actions and words. That they would help one-another. That they would become good people. You rarely saw that anymore between the bystander effect and people simply being unknowledgeable about how to help others who were in need. Some, perhaps, did not even care.

This,” he says, “is the bystander effect. It’s a social psychology phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when there are other people present.

de lo que en psiquiatría forense se conoce como «bystander effect»,[ 36 ] una teoría (más que probada) que asegura que a medida que aumenta el número de viandantes que ven a una persona en apuros descienden las probabilidades de que alguien ayude a la víctima (y aumentan las de que señalen con el dedo y avisen a sus conocidos para que lo vean).

The mythic elements of the Genovese case prompt the quasi myth that in an emergency requiring brave intervention, the more people present, the less likely anyone is to help—“There’s lots of people here; someone else will step forward.” The bystander effect does occur in nondangerous situations, where the price of stepping forward is inconvenience. However, in dangerous situations, the more people present, the more likely individuals are to step forward.

If we really sought truth we would begin slowly and laboriously to divest ourselves one by one of all our coverings of fiction and delusion: or at least we would desire to do so, for mere willing cannot enable us to effect it. On the contrary, the one who can best point out our error, and help us to see it, is the adversary whom we wish to destroy. This is perhaps why we wish to destroy him. So, too, we can help him to see his error, and that is why he wants to destroy us. In the long run, no one can show another the error that is within him, unless the other is convinced that his critic first sees and loves the good that is within him. So while we are perfectly willing to tell our adversary he is wrong, we will never be able to do so effectively until we can ourselves appreciate where he is right. And we can never accept his judgment on our errors until he gives evidence that he really appreciates our own peculiar truth. Love, love only, love of our deluded fellow man as he actually is, in his delusion and in his sin: this alone can open the door to truth. As long as we do not have this love, as long as this love is not active and effective in our lives (for words and good wishes will never suffice) we have no real access to the truth. At least not to moral truth.

Soldiers are required to close with the enemy, possibly in the midst of innocent bystanders, and fight; and to continue operating in the face of mortal danger. This is a group activity, at all scales of effort and intensities. Soldiers are part of a team, and the effectiveness of that team depends on each individual playing his or her part to the full. Success depends above all else on good morale, which is the spirit that enables soldiers to triumph over adversity: morale linked to, and reinforced by, discipline.

Everything that exists, simply by virtue of existing, exhibits God's abdication and obedience to necessity. Paradoxically expressed, this means that God is powerless against his own will: he cannot let the world exist without abdicating to necessity, therefore his will cannot undo or countermand the governance of necessity. [...] God's sole effective action in the world is inaction; he upholds the world by refusing to enter into the world. He expresses his love by withdrawing and communicating his absence in the form of abdication and powerlessness. God is involved in the world, sharing in its sufferings, primarily in the capacity of powerlessness, which is to say, as an infinitely participating bystander. Christ crucified is the unique image of God in the world that corresponds to God the Creator outside the world, exiled and unable to intervene. God is not the immediate governor of events in the world, necessity is, in all its imperious and impartial arbitrariness. [...] God 'does not change anything' in the sense that God's infinite love for the world cannot remit or reduce suffering under the yoke of necessity. It follows that Christ on the cross is the image of redemption *through* suffering not *from* suffering. For the 'tremendous greatness' of Christianity, Weil proposes, is that it does not seek a supernatural remedy against suffering but a supernatural use for it.

the “bystander effect”: the more people around to provide help, the less likely one is to receive help. Dad hypothesized that this didn’t apply to black people, a loving race whose very survival has been dependent on helping one another in times of need. So he made me stand on the busiest intersection in the neighborhood, dollar bills bursting from my pockets, the latest and shiniest electronic gadgetry jammed into my ear canals, a hip-hop heavy gold chain hanging from my neck, and, inexplicably, a set of custom-made carpeted Honda Civic floor mats draped over my forearm like a waiter’s towel, and as tears streamed from my eyes, my own father mugged me. He

To cultivate bravery and courage, avoid the bystander effect. Rather than standing on the sidelines watching other people achieve their goals, jump in with both feet and get involved.

Picture the lobby of a hotel. [...] Now fill up the lobby with dentists and superheroes. Men and women, oral surgeons, eighth-dimensional entities, mutants, and freaks who want to save your teeth, save the world, and maybe end up with a television show, too. [...] Boards in the lobby list panels on advances in cosmetic dentistry, effective strategies for minimizing liability in cases of bystander hazard, presentations with titles like “Spandex or Bulletproof? What Look Is Right For You?

Our professor, a man in his sixties with hair that always seems to be sticking up, looks at each and every one of us, accusation in his eyes like we were the thirty-eight people who left that woman to die. “This,” he says, “is the bystander effect. It’s a social psychology phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when there are other people present.” The students in the room are scribbling in their notes or typing on their laptops. I just stare at the professor. “Think about it,” Professor Kindred says. “Over three dozen people allowed a woman to be raped and murdered, and they just watched and did nothing. This perfectly demonstrates diffusion of responsibility in a group.

In general, then, your best strategy when in need of emergency help is to reduce the uncertainties of those around you concerning your condition and their responsibilities. Be as precise as possible about your need for aid. Do not allow bystanders to come to their own conclusions because the principle of social proof and the consequent pluralistic-ignorance effect might well cause them to view your situation as a nonemergency. Of all the techniques in this book designed to produce compliance with a request, this one is the most important to remember. After all, the failure of your request for emergency aid could mean the loss of your life. Besides

The one who can best point out our error, and help us to see it, is the adversary whom we wish to destroy. This is perhaps why we wish to destroy him. So, too, we can help him to see his error, and that is why he wants to destroy us. In the long run, no one can show another the error that is within him, unless the other is convinced that his critic first sees and loves the good that is within him. So while we are perfectly willing to tell our adversary he is wrong, we will never be able to do so effectively until we can ourselves appreciate where he is right. And we can never accept his judgment on our errors until he gives evidence that he really appreciates our own peculiar truth. Love, love only, love of our deluded fellow man as he actually is, in his delusion and in his sin: this alone can open the door to truth.

The one who can best point out our error, and help us to see it, is the adversary whom we wish to destroy. This is perhaps why we wish to destroy him. So, too, we can help him to see his error, and that is why he wants to destroy us. In the long run, no one can show another the error that is within him, unless the other is convinced that his critic first sees and loves the good that is within him. So while we are perfectly willing to tell our adversary he is wrong, we will never be able to do so effectively until we can ourselves appreciate where he is right. And we can never accept his judgment on our errors until he gives evidence that he really appreciates our own peculiar truth. Love, love only, love of our deluded fellow man as he actually is, in his delusion and in his sin: this alone can open the door to truth. (pp. 68-9)

The betrayal by bystanders can take many forms and can be especially painful in movements for social justice, where participants aspire to solidarity and “beloved community” but where patriarchal customs run deep. For this reason many feminists have expressed reservations about adapting RJ processes for crimes of violence against women. When community norms and beliefs are as divided and contentious as they are at present on matters of gender and power, it is hard to trust that community-based justice alternatives will be any more effective than the conventional justice system in addressing gender-based violence.

the less people act, because they don’t feel as responsible than if they had been alone and that everything depended on them. This mechanism is called the bystander effect: I think that someone else will act, but that someone else will think the same, so in the end nobody acts. In

Often it is not clear whose job it is to detect the warning, evaluate it, and decide to act. The President of the United States or the CEO of a corporation might be the person who could order action, but there may not be a general understanding of who should take the issue to them. Who owns it? Frequently, no one wants to own an issue that’s about to become a disaster. This reluctance creates a “bystander effect,” wherein observers of the problem feel no responsibility to act.7 Increasingly, complex issues are multidisciplinary, making it unclear where the responsibility lies. New complex problems or “issues on the seams” are more likely to produce ambiguity about who is in charge of dealing with them.

The DRI concept helps avoid diffusion of responsibility, also known as the bystander effect, where people fail to take responsibility for something when they are in a group, because they think someone else will take on that responsibility. In effect, they act like bystanders, and the responsibility diffuses across all the members of the group instead of being concentrated in one person who is held accountable.

Each of these bans – from marijuana to prostitution to pseudoephedrine – have had exactly the same effects: None of them have affected demand one iota, nor hampered those who wish to partake. All of them have enriched criminals and increased true crime and bloodshed. All of them have enticed millions who might not otherwise have committed crimes into participating in the lucrative black markets created by their prohibition. All have increased the danger to users or sellers of the banned product or service (and even to innocent bystanders), often to fatal levels. All have given rise to rampant corruption, overwhelmed court and prison systems, dangerously expanded governmental powers, and negated civil liberties; all have caused the waste of billions on enforcement and the loss of billions more in tax revenues. And each has admirably accomplished what it was enacted to accomplish: the redefinition of large segments of the population from citizens to criminals, thus allowing government yet another excuse to deprive them of their rights, goods and freedoms.

The likelihood that one or more potential victims or bystanders are armed would be very large even though the probability that any particular individual is armed is very low.16 This suggests a testable hypothesis: A right-to-carry law will have a bigger deterrent effect on shooting sprees in public places than on more conventional crimes.