Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1968, Vol. 8, No. 4, 377-383

BYSTANDER INTERVENTION IN EMERGENCIES:

DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY3

JOHN M. BARLEY

New York University

BIBB LATANfi

Columbia University

Ss overheard an epileptic seizure. They believed either that they alone heard the emergency, or that 1 or 4 unseen others were also present. As predicted the presence of other bystanders reduced the individual’s feelings of personal responsibility and lowered his speed of reporting (p < .01). In groups of size 3, males reported no faster than females, and females reported no slower when the 1 other bystander was a male rather than a female. In general, personality and background measures were not predictive of helping. Bystander inaction in real-life emergencies is often explained by “apathy,” “alienation,” and “anomie.” This experiment suggests that the explanation may lie more in the bystander’s response to other observers than in his indifference to the victim.

Several years ago, a young woman was stabbed to death in the middle of a street in a residential section of New York City. Al- though such murders are not entirely routine, the incident received little public attention until several weeks later when the New York Times disclosed another side to the case: at least 38 witnesses had observed the attack— and none had even attempted to intervene. Although the attacker took more than half an hour to kill Kitty Genovese, not one of the 38 people who watched from the safety of their own apartments came out to assist her. Not one even lifted the telephone to call the police (Rosenthal, 1964).

Preachers, professors, and news commenta- tors sought the reasons for such apparently conscienceless and inhumane lack of interven- tion. Their conclusions ranged from “moral decay,” to “dehumanization produced by the urban environment,” to “alienation,” “anomie,” and “existential despair.” An anal- ysis of the situation, however, suggests that factors other than apathy and indifference were involved.

A person witnessing an emergency situa- tion, particularly such a frightening and

1 This research was supported in part by National Science Foundation Grants GS1238 and GS1239. Susan Darley contributed materially to the design of the experiment and ran the subjects, and she and Thomas Moriarty analyzed the data. Richard Nisbett, Susan Millman, Andrew Gordon, and Norma Neiman helped in preparing the tape recordings.

dangerous one as a stabbing, is in conflict. There are obvious humanitarian norms about helping the victim, but there are also rational and irrational fears about what might happen to a person who does intervene (Milgram & Hollander, 1964). “I didn’t want to get involved,” is a familiar comment, and behind it lies fears of physical harm, public embar- rassment, involvement with police procedures, lost work days and jobs, and other unknown dangers.

In certain circumstances, the norms favor- ing intervention may be weakened, leading bystanders to resolve the conflict in the direc- tion of nonintervention. One of these circum- stances may be the presence of other on- lookers. For example, in the case above, each observer, by seeing lights and figures in other apartment house windows, knew that others were also watching. However, there was no way to tell how the other observers were reacting. These two facts provide several reasons why any individual may have delayed or failed to help. The responsibility for help- ing was diffused among the observers; there was also diffusion of any potential blame for not taking action; and finally, it was possible that somebody, unperceived, had already initiated helping action.

When only one bystander is present in an emergency, if help is to come, it must come from him. Although he may choose to ignore it (out of concern for his personal safety, or desires “not to get involved”), any pres-

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sure to intervene focuses uniquely on him. When there are several observers present, however, the pressures to intervene do not focus on any one of the observers; instead the responsibility for intervention is shared among all the onlookers and is not unique to any one. As a result, no one helps.

A second possibility is that potential blame may be diffused. However much we may wish to think that an individual’s moral behavior is divorced from considerations of personal punishment or reward, there is both theory and evidence to the contrary (Aronfreed, 1964; Miller & Bollard, 1941, Whiting & Child, 19S3). It is perfectly reasonable to assume that, under circumstances of group responsibility for a punishable act, the pun- ishment or blame that accrues to any one individual is often slight or nonexistent.

Finally, if others are known to be present, but their behavior cannot be closely observed, any one bystander can assume that one of the other observers is already taking action to end the emergency. Therefore, his own intervention would be only redundant—per- haps harmfully or confusingly so. Thus, given the presence of other onlookers whose behavior cannot be observed, any given by- stander can rationalize his own inaction by convincing himself that “somebody else must be doing something.”

These considerations lead to the hypothesis that the more bystanders to an emergency, the less likely, or the more slowly, any one bystander will intervene to provide aid. To test this propostion it would be necessary to create a situation in which a realistic “emergency” could plausibly occur. Each sub- ject should also be blocked from com- municating with others to prevent his getting information about their behavior during the emergency. Finally, the experimental situa- tion should allow for the assessment of the speed and frequency of the subjects’ reaction to the emergency. The experiment reported below attempted to fulfill these conditions.

PROCEDURE

Overview. A college student arrived in the labora- tory and was ushered into an individual room from which a communication system would enable him to talk to the other participants. It was explained to him that he was to take part in a discussion

about personal problems associated with college life and that the discussion would be held over the intercom system, rather than face-to-face, in order to avoid embarrassment by preserving the anonym- ity of the subjects. During the course of the dis- cussion, one of the other subjects underwent what appeared to be a very serious nervous seizure simi- lar to epilepsy. During the fit it was impossible for the subject to talk to the other discussants or to find out what, if anything, they were doing about the emergency. The dependent variable was the speed with which the subjects reported the emer- gency to the experimenter. The major independent variable was the number of people the subject thought to be in the discussion group.

Subjects. Fifty-nine female and thirteen male stu- dents in introductory psychology courses at New York University were contacted to take part in an unspecified experiment as part of a class requirement.

Method. Upon arriving for the experiment, the subject found himself in a long corridor with doors opening off it to several small rooms. An experi- mental assistant met him, took him to one of the rooms, and seated him at a table. After filling out a background information form, the subject was given a pair of headphones with an attached microphone and was told to listen for instructions.

Over the intercom, the experimenter explained that he was interested in learning about the kinds of personal problems faced by normal college students in a high pressure, urban environment. He said that to avoid possible embarrassment about dis- cussing personal problems with strangers several precautions had been taken. First, subjects would remain anonymous, which was why they had been placed in individual rooms rather than face-to-face. (The actual reason for this was to allow tape recorder simulation of the other subjects and the emergency.) Second, since the discussion might be inhibited by the presence of outside listeners, the experimenter would not listen to the initial discus- sion, but would get the subject’s reactions later, by questionnaire. (The real purpose of this was to remove the obviously responsible experimenter from the scene of the emergency.)