The Bystander Effect

The 1964 murder and rape of Kitty Genovese, and subsequent reporting in the New York Times claiming that 38 people witnessed the attack and didn’t intervene, spawned the term the bystander effect. While the account of the attack was inaccurate, the bystander effect turned out to be real, asserting that bystanders are less likely to help someone in need, even in an emergency, if other people are present, or even if they imagine others to be nearby.

When we witness someone in distress, we are presented with the dilemma of whether to intervene and potentially put ourselves at risk, or to keep walking. To intervene, we have to first notice that something is wrong, define the situation as requiring help, determine that we are personally responsible, figure out what to do, and then act. We are more likely to act if helping the other person makes us feel better about ourselves or avoid the guilt of having not helped, and are less likely to act if we fear negative consequences to ourselves as a result of intervening.

Many other factors, including culture, impact whether we will help a stranger in distress, but one thing is certain – over the course of our lives, we will encounter people in trouble and will have to decide what, if anything, to do about it. As a species, our record isn’t stellar in this regard. Most of us watch the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine with horror, but neither do anything ourselves nor urge our governments to do anything about it. We did the same when Russia obliterated Grozny and flattened Aleppo.

We looked on when Myanmar attacked and displaced the Rohingya, as China represses the Uyghurs, and when Hutus attacked Tutsis in Rwanda. Our bystander apathy isn’t limited to wars but also when we witness oppression, political violence, ethnic cleansing, disease, hunger, and other calamities. Some people act, but most of us don’t. Some of us don’t care, others feel helpless, some are scared, and others feel it’s not our place to intervene.

While it’s not our role to judge whether someone should have intervened or not, the result of this global bystander effect is that horrible things continue to happen all over the world. This isn’t new, but with today’s video and communication technology, we can no longer claim to be unaware. We can’t be expected to fix everything in the world, but tolerating this much horror without taking some action is wrong and will eventually backfire on us as well.

To quote Pastor Martin Niemöller regarding Nazi Germany, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”