George Floyd's Death and the Bystander Effect

By DramaticalKaito | ColorlessCoder | 29 Jun 2020

George Floyd's Death and the Bystander Effect

On May 25, George Floyd was killed in a police arrest after Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for over eight minutes. [^NYT]
The US was shaken up by nationwide protests over the death of Mr. Floyd --an African-American citizen-- under the knees of Mr. Chauvin--a white police officer.
A terrifying --yet not unexpected-- fact about this case is that it happened in public, three colleagues of Mr. Chavin were present and they either stood by nonchalantly or assisted in holding the man on the ground, in addition to the presence of several passers-by, and --last but not least-- some bystanders.
This is a modern case of the Bystander Effect: A term psychologists use to describe and study the reason people *allow* evil to happen.

After the infamous murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964, two psychologists Bibb Latane and John Darley started doing some experiments to study this phenomenon.
One of these experiments went like this: Students (subjects) were brought into an isolated room and were told that they would be listening to other anonymous students' problems via an intercom system.
The experiment was set up in such a way that only one person could be heard over the network at any given time; that is, while any microphone was on, all other microphones would be off.
During the course of the discussion, one of the subjects sounded as if he were experiencing an epileptic seizure.
In reality, this 'victim' was an actor's recording. The script ended like this: [^PAPER]

"I could really-er-use some help so if somebody would-er-give me a little h-help-uh-er-er-er-er-er
c-could somebody-er-er-help-er-uh-uh-uh [choking sounds]...
I'm gonna die-er-er-I'm.. gonna die-er-help-er-er-seizure-er-[chokes, then quiet]."

In this way, subjects were led to believe this scenario: When they heard the seizure, only the victim's microphone was on, so there was no way of knowing what any of the other participants were doing, nor of discussing the event and its possible solutions with the others.
85% of the subjects who thought they alone knew of the victim's predicament called for help, while only 31% of those who thought other participants were present did so.
After the experiment had ended, researchers asked participants about what they were thinking and how they were feeling. It turned out that even subjects who didn't call for help immediately were concerned and confused and didn't know what to do.

The Bystander Effect states that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when there are other people present. That is, the more people, the less likely it is that one of them will help.
Several factors/concepts contribute to or explain this phenomenon, including:
* Pluralistic Ignorance is when people make inferences or decisions based on unreliable indicators such as other people's actions, reactions, or lack thereof.
For example, if a student finds a difficulty following or understanding the material being presented in class, they probably would observe the facial expressions and reactions of other students and may assume --often incorrectly-- that they are the only one failing to understand, so this student would "act normal" and refrain from asking questions for fear of embarrassing themselves, thus perpetuating this vicious cycle. [^MELISSA]

* Diffusion of Responsibility is when bystanders believe someone else will take responsibility when others are present. This can happen because they expect other bystanders to be more qualified (medics, police officers, etc.), because they fear their assistance is unneeded or unwanted, or because they fear facing legal consequences if they end up causing more harm due to their incompetent or dangerous aid.

Understanding the Bystander Effect and other influences can help us better educate people about them and actively work to prepare and overcome them.
As other experiments conducted in the subsequent years suggest: In a crisis, a person can override this crippling effect by eliminating any ambiguity surrounding the seriousness of the situation, and by making onlookers feel responsible by picking/isolating one or a few of them and issuing direct commands to them, for example.
Also, we could implement laws that hold bystanders responsible in urgent cases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue),
and other laws to reduce witnesses' hesitation by reassuring them that their good-intentioned interventions will not be punished regardless of the consequences (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law).
The former category is like the Minneapolis city council's new rule that requires colleagues to intervene in such cases of misconduct: "Officers are also required to intervene if a colleague breaks these edicts". [^GUARDIAN]
But, eh, at the end of the day,

"You can see it on the news, you can watch it on TV, you can read it on your phone, you can say it's troubling.
Humans aren't gonna behave as we think we always should. Yeah, we can be bad as we can be good.
How can we expect anything at all, we are animals still learning how to crawl."
-- Savages, MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS

References
=========

[NYT]:
- The New York Times, (2020). The Death of George Floyd in Minneapolis: What We Know So Far | The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/us/george-floyd-minneapolis-death.html)

[GUARDIAN]:
- Milman, O., (2020). Minneapolis pledges to dismantle its police department – how will it work? | The Guardian
(https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/08/minneapolis-city-council-police-department-dismantle)

[PAPER]:
- Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: diffusion of responsibility. Journal of personality and social psychology, 8(4), 377–383. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025589
* https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/5645600/
* (this has a free PDF) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Bystander-intervention-in-emergencies%3A-diffusion-of-Darley-Latan%C3%A9/a17d8ee9f157ebeb2f520406c1d79346ceb532c8

- A nice read by Deana Segilia (a student?) about the experiemt: https://sites.psu.edu/dps16/2016/04/07/the-bystander-apathy-experiment/

[MELISSA]:
- Buckley, M., (2009). Why Don't People Help? - Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/za/blog/the-social-thinker/200911/why-do-we-help-less-when-there-is-crowd)

- Vitelli, R., (2016). Exploring the Volunteer's Dilemma - Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/za/blog/media-spotlight/201604/exploring-the-volunteers-dilemma)