Bystander Effect or Diffusion of Responsibility is a psychological phenomenon which describes the failure of individuals to intervene, to help someone at risk or in distress, when in the presence of a larger group. Awareness of the Bystander Effect is important for both HSE professionals and Leaders alike.
Students of Psychology are usually introduced to the Bystander Effect through the tragic story of Kitty Genovese, a young American woman who was brutally murdered in 1964. Kitty was a bar-worker who, in the early hours of the morning, was attacked outside her apartment building whilst returning home after finishing work. Kitty’s screams for help whilst being attacked reportedly awoke as many as 38 of her neighbours and many of her neighbours could see the attack as it happened. The number of witnesses has long been subject to dispute but many named witnesses gave statements. Despite the many witnesses, no-one intervened. Her attacker fled at one point before returning to murder her. Social Psychologists labelled the inaction of the witness as the Bystander Effect or Genovese Syndrome.
Numerous psychological studies have recreated the phenomenon and have also demonstrated that people are much more likely to help or intervene when alone.
The Bystander Effect is often termed ‘diffusion of responsibility’, an accurate description of what occurs in these situations. When people are in a group or the presence of others they are less likely to intervene and will wait for others to do so. Just when you think the odds of an intervention should be increasing with the number of people those odds are actually decreasing. People feel less responsibility to act when in the presence of others.
A study undertaken by Latane and Darley placed students into an experiment. A single student would be alone in a room placed on a call and told that the call was with other students who were in their own rooms. Some students were placed on a call with one other person who was in fact an actor, other students were placed on a call with the same actor but were told that four others were on the same call and could also hear the same person. When the actor feigned a seizure some 85% of the students who were in a one-to-one call tried to raise the alarm but only 31% of those who thought they were in a group call tried to raise the alarm. The four others on the call were not real people, the student’s in the ‘group call’ did not have any verbal or visual cues yet acted very differently to those who believed they were the only people hearing the distressed actor.
Darley and Latane’s experiment tells us that there does not need to be a group. If we believe that others are seeing or hearing a problem then we are less likely to act. This suggests that if we think that others have walked past the same unsafe condition as us then we are less likely to report it.
The learning for workplace safety is that the responsibility to intervene needs to be clearly and repeatedly communicated. The aim must be for no-one to be in any doubt about their personal responsibility.
The importance of Schema in training is discussed in another Psyched HSEQ post. Training which demonstrates the importance of intervening, even when others are not, should be a key part of that training.