Bystander apathy is a social psychological construct where it is believed that someone who sees a victim is less likely to offer help when other people are present.
You know, sometimes we really do live in a society
“The scholars examined video recordings of 219 arguments and assaults in inner cities of Amsterdam (Netherlands), Lancaster (UK) and Cape Town (South Africa).”
“Video surveillance of actual crimes instead shows that in 91 percent of cases someone helped victims of aggression and violence, and the more people who see it, the more likely more than one person helps. It may be that instead of feeling embarrassment about being inadequate with more witnesses around, as psychologists previously speculated, people are emboldened by having others nearby.”
“Some people are just not going to help, of course, that is the diversity of people, but that is why claiming the bystander effect applied to broad populations was a mistake. There was no difference in the rates of intervention between the three cities, even though inner city Cape Town is less safe than Amsterdam. The high levels of intervention across different national and urban contexts suggests that intervention is the norm in real-life inner-city public conflicts.”
It’s important to remember that the Bystander Effect was never an actual theory proposed by academics or social scientists. It was coined by a newspaper journalist and gained traction from that. And the journalist even got the details of the case in question (the murder of Kitty Genovese) completely wrong, like in an ye olde click-bait-y way.
So the “Bystander Effect” literally never had any scientific or academic backing when it first came out, and it’s since been debunked numerous times, but people jumped on it because it was compelling. Just goes to show how powerful media representation can be in affecting public consciousness.
