Bystander Intervention

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Helping, Darley & Latane’s studies of Bystander Intervention (1960s) Social Psychologists, Darley and Latane were the first to introduce the bystander effect (originally called “bystander apathy”). These researchers were trying to address a response to the homicidal case of kitty Genovese occurred in 1964. For this case, thirty-eight people witnessed the crime from their home and made no attempt to help the victim. Darley and Latane conducted four experiments in attempt to study how people will react under different situations. In one of the experiments conducted, participants either waited alone, with a confederate, or with a friend in a room. The experimenter led them to a room in where the room itself was separated from another room by …show more content…
For the participants that were alone in the room only 70% reacted, for those with a confederate 7% reacted, and for those paired with a stranger only 40%. The researchers concluded that “people are less likely to help others in need when there are a greater number of people around them”. I believe these finding are important because it is something that is still occurring today, and if more people are aware of it, they will be more likely to help under a severe situation disregarding the amount of people in the scene. I also believe that if the research is conducted again today, the results would stay the same for the reason that we are less likely to intervene under a situation we believe or think to be dangerous or something that causes us to feel fear. This research is related to my topic on bullying and cyberbullying because when “the bystander effect” takes place under bullying, the witness is more likely to intervene and stop the bullying when there are few or no other witnesses around. “When kids do nothing, bullies tend to feel more empowered and will continue to physically or verbally harass other kids. Understanding the bystander effect and resulting behavior can help parents address this issue with their kids and teach them to take …show more content…
He conducted an experiment with the participation of fifty male students from Swarthmore College known to be tested for a “vision test”. Asch used a line judgment task, putting seven confederates in a room with a naïve participant. Each person in the room were shown a target line followed by three other lines, leaving them to decide which one of those three lines were most similar to the target line. Having eighteen trials in total, only twelve of these trials were given the wrong answer by confederates. The researcher found that on average 32% of the participants placed on this experiment conformed to the wrong results of the confederates, and “12 critical trials about 75% of participants conformed at least once and 25% of participant never conformed. In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer (Asch Experiment).” Asch concluded that people tend to conform in order to fit in with the group, ad because they believe “the group to be better informed than they are.” The findings of this research are important because it emphasized the power of conformity, and how people tend to conform with others in order to feel accepted. If this research was conducted today, I feel that the results would be somewhat similar for the reason that if everyone were to clearly say