The Bystander Effect, or bystander apathy, is the phenomenon that happens when someone is less likely to help an individual in an emergency if there are other people around. The greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is for any one of them to aid the person in distress.
There are many different studies that suggest why this happens, and what factors into it. Some researchers have come up with a five-step process that details what humans think when encountering an emergency: The emergency captures the attention of the individual, who then evaluates the emergency. Then they decide on their responsibility and competence, and lastly they make the decision whether or not to help the person in distress.
One of the most popular interpretations of what causes bystander apathy is that it relies on three factors: diffusion of responsibility, evaluation apprehension, and pluralistic ignorance. Diffusion of responsibility is the tendency to divide responsibility based on how many people are present in a situation. Bystanders are less likely to intervene in emergency situations as the size of the group increases, and they feel less personal responsibility. Evaluation apprehension is the fear that one would be judged by others around them when they engage in the situation. Pluralistic ignorance is the belief that because no one else is helping, the situation is not actually an emergency.
In a study from 2018, researchers revisited the bystander effect and explored whether dispositional influences played into it. Dispositional influences are how each person is influenced by their personality traits when they respond to a situation. It has been generally believed that personality traits are negligible when it comes to bystander apathy, but that notion contrasts with other research areas that state that individual personalities do widely influence helping behavior. In terms of general helping behavior, the two main dispositional factors are sympathy and personal distress. These researchers therefore studied how sympathy and personal distress come into play in a bystander situation. They found, as predicted, that sympathy and personal distress were only really effective during emergency situations when there weren’t other bystanders around. But, they additionally found that personal distress was the only factor that influenced the negative effect of bystanders during an emergency. This association proved that bystander apathy is related more to a reflexive reaction, rather than a reflective one.
These same researchers also studied the effect of motivational systems on the bystander effect. According to a 2015 study, there are two opposing motivational systems, which are similar to sympathy and personal distress, that are activated in an emergency situation. The first system correlates to personal distress, and it is the instantaneous activation of your fight-freeze-flight reaction. Due to this reaction, helping behavior does not occur, because the behavior response is limited to avoidance and freeze responses. The second system is enacted after by a slower feeling of sympathy, which causes self reflection, and an active cognitive decision to act. The second system counteracts the effect of the first system, and it is what generates a person to help another. The net result of the two systems in action is what typically causes helping behavior, and the strength of each system varies between individuals, leading to each individual to have a different likelihood of helping another. In an emergency with bystanders present, the activity of the first system, the fight-freeze-flight reaction, increases. Therefore, the probability of helping behavior to occur is decreased, and people are more likely to avoid the situation.
At my school, we have a mandatory self-defense program that we do in our freshman year. In this program, one of the strategies to use when one is being attacked in public is to call out to a specific person to help them. For example, if I was in distress, I would yell, “You in the red sweatshirt, come help me!” This forces a bystander to take accountability by activating the second system of sympathy, and leads to a cognitive decision to help. It also overrides the factor of pluralistic ignorance by telling the bystander that this is, in fact, an emergency situation that requires action.
Sources:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6099971/
