This reminds me of the Kitty Genovese case. I took an organizational behavior class in college in which we spent a significant amount of time on the bystandard effect, which is horrifically apparent in the article you linked. There's a lot going in in the bystander effect, but what it pretty much boils down to is that people are far less likely to help someone in a group setting than they are when they're the only one there to help.

Bottom line -- if you need help, and you're in a mob situation (and you're actually in shape to ask for help), focus on one person.

And that should have been bystander effect, not bystandard effect. Sigh. What comes of not proofing...

We have seen this before with the Kitty Genovese murder in 1964 and surely many times since then as well. Social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latane studied this tendency for people to avoid intervening and called it "diffusion of responsibility." It has been replicated many times in social psychology experiments. Although the video is disturbing and it is tempting to paint all of the bystanders with the brush of callousness, the fact that this phenomenon has happened time and again suggests maybe other factors are at work. The Latane and Darley work suggested that people in these situations (as in life) tend to take their cues for appropriate social behavior from others - so even if they are inclined to help, no one else is doing anything so they figure it must not be serious or someone else would already be helping. They also found that the fewer bystanders, the more likely the victim was to receive help. Also if a specific person was asked to help and given specific instructions (i.e., "you - call 911!) this also raised the likelihood of helping.

Can you talk more about "diffusion of responsibility"?

Diffusion of responsibility means that the larger a group gets, the people in it feel less responsible for what happens. They either let something happen that they wouldn't let happen if they were alone, or do something that they wouldn't do if they were alone. In the former case, they justify their inaction by thinking someone else will take responsibility (bystander effect); in the latter case, they justify their action by thinking everyone else is doing it (groupthink). Either way, they don't feel individually responsible; the action or inaction is blamed on the group, not the people in it.

The bottom line is that people are far more likely to take responsibility when there are fewer or no people around. That's why if you want something done, you give it to an individual, not a committee. :)

Everybody is commenting about the bystanders and saying how can they be so cruel.
Well...what I think is that many of the bystanders did want to help, they just didnt know how to help.
Think of what they would be undergoing:
1. Most of them have never seen such an accident... so they might have gone in a state of disbelief.
2. The man is severely hurt. They might feel they might hurt the person more by moving him. They might be more comfortable dialing 911 and allowing professionals handle this.
3. They might be afraid of legal complications involved with helping the person. In a country where people get sued for serving coffee that is too hot, you might get sued for dragging an injured person from the middle of the road to the sidewalk, if it could be proved that he would have been in a better condition when left there!
I feel somebody should write about how one can help such a victim rather than complain about the bystanders not helping.

Good points by all the posters.

The 'diffusion of responsibility' argument is particularly of interest, as are Parker's points, which I can appreciate except for the final admonishment. Finding out what to do in such a situation is a click away on computers these days, or a phone call away if you prefer the old-fashioned method. Either way, you find yourself in a class gathering hands-on experience.

I would add the following as possible redundant explanations to this bizarre social behavior:

1 - People don't care because it's not them or someone they know.

2 - People think that they are powerless, i.e. 'someone' more qualified then they are will come along and resolve the problem BETTER THAN THEY COULD. I think this is particularily pertinent, considering the remarks of Parker - which, to my (possilby flawed) opinion = I've never had a class! What do I know what to do!!! Yikes! Instead of just doing what you think might be best - running out there and put your hand to the part that's bleeding.

Which leads to point 3 -

Blood is... icky. It's amazing what people will do to aviod dealing with what they consider 'icky' - from changing diapers, to hovering over toilet bowls, and peeing all over said 'icky' toilet bowel in order to avoid putting ones tush on the offending seat (which, if it hadn't been pee'd on to begin with, wouldn't be 'icky' - go figure), to staunching bloody wounds.

Bah. It's all awful, no matter how you look at it.

Mostly, I think it's because people either don't care, or if they do, they feel powerless to help. As to the latter, that's another whole discussion.

Hey, here's MiB with the pertinent quote: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."

There is also this wonderful saying with its double meaning: "If enough people are responsible, no one will be at fault."

But people are taught more and more that the correct response to any problem is to call someone else. That I find disgusting.

When everyone's responsible, no one's responsible. As PJ O'rourke put it, consider the cleanliness of a public toilet.

I've seen 3 bad auto accidents in the last year. The excellence of the local response tracked the grade of the neighborhood tax base pretty closely. I suppose if you're wealthier, you know you have something to give. But being willing to give effort to thins is one thing that'll make you wealthy.

Anyway, there's a principle in there that deserves an axiom.

Crid-
I wonder if it is wealth or education level, or some other factor (I wonder if the three neighborhoods have voting percentage records in proportion to their incomes.) In any case, I find your post interesting.

Then there is always the possibility of a rescuer getting sued.

Found a couple of interesting articles there, but I aslo found something far more interesting.

http://tallahassee.com/legacy/special/blogs/2007/10/cop-who-fell-on-job-sues-family-of-baby.html

Cop hurt her knee in a response to a drowning and then sues the homeowner for damages. Thats a new twist, cop sues victim.

On a side note that links back to an earlier blog post, apparently the brain dead baby is being kept alive, over a year now, on a feeding tube and breathing machine, what do you want to bet at tax payer expense?

Turns out the cop got fired

http://www.officer.com/online/article.jsp?siteSection=1&id=39188

While watching WTNH news this morning, it was reported that there were 4 '911' calls logged that were related to this accident, but they didn't say how far apart or how long after the accident the calls were made. Unfortunately, Hartford isn't especially known for its friendliness. I've been there several times, mostly to the Civic Center, which is now the 'FX' or some such, for the music. And not much else. I much prefer New Haven. Or the casinos.

I lived in Hartford for 2 years. This doesn't really surprise me.

I think you are spot-on with the "diffusion of responsibility" thing. Another study I read in college was they took students to a room to fill out questionaires on student sexual activity (legitimate and interesting topic so the study was believable to the subjects) and had a maintanence worker fall off a ladder outside the room, and call for help, and moan, and all that good stuff. When there was more than 1 student in the room, they rarely took any action. When it was only 1 student, they almost always did something to help.

Of course, it doesn't make it any less sickening. I live in TX, and last year saw a bike rider have a spill, and turned to go help, but others were already there (I should mention all the aid-givers were minorities. Go them) And once in a very nice neighborhood saw an older lady tip her morotcycle. Again, several stopped by the time I got turned around. So are southerners just more likely to aid? I doubt it. Maybe I just happened to see nice people twice, or maybe nice people helping is more common, but not newsworthy? Does Hartford not have a "failure to stop and render aid" law they could prosecute the people passing by that were caught on camera with?

Does Hartford not have a "failure to stop and render aid" law they could prosecute the people passing by that were caught on camera with?

Is there such a law anywhere? How would it be enforced? Would it apply to just anyone, or only to people with first aid/medical training? How would it be determined whom to prosecute, and for what reasons? Remember, there have been stories of people who have stopped to help others, only to be sued, and/or vilified for their trouble. My nephew tried to help a woman he saw being beaten by her boyfriend, in public, on a beach, and got his nose broken. It seems to me to be a catch-22 situation - damned if you do, damned if you don't. YMMV

I don't know. I go two ways about it and, since I do, I think don't judge unless you were there.

First of all, stopping is risky. Morally, call 911 but asking more than that of an innocent bystander, asking them to open themself up to risk, is unreasonable. A lot of time, calling 911 (as several apparently did), is all I'd do.

I'd like to think I'd take some further action but it depends. Con artists fake getting hit so they can sue. Robbers likewise and you may find that so-called victim leaping up to conk you over the head and taking your purse for giving a shit about them.

If it was obvious that it was a real victim in dire trouble (and that's a hard one to know for sure but if the bleeding or something likewise obvious made it clear), I might stand in front of them while dialing 911 on the cell but again I say might. If these cars were looking like they'd just as soon clip you as go around you, then probably not. I'm not joining him on the pavement.

That said, I have been the idiot a time or two to put myself out there without repursion -- both dealing with the blind.

First, the smaller, a blind friend and I rode the same bus down to the busiest intersection in Denver (Colfax & Broadway if anyone's familiar) then transferred to different lines but had to cross the intersection to do it. My daughter was small and slow then and he'd been blind since birth and had partial sight (5% he was quite proud of) and went at such a good clip that he usually got far ahead of us and joined us across the street but did have to depend on listening to the traffic. The lights were out one morning and cars were going through as they could. He listened and didn't know what was happening because of the stop and go on both sides. You'd think the decent thing to do seeing a white cane would be stop and let the blind man cross the road but the reaction was to step on the gas and beat him across. You'd think one of the pedestrians not attending to a small child would offer to help him cross as they did but no way. I had to run up dragging my daughter and tell him what was going on and help him across. I still wonder if he'd had made it across in one piece if I hadn't been there. My daughter swears a car almost hit him but if it did, I missed it. I saw one come close but he hadn't stepped off the curb yet. When he got on his bus before ours, some woman said I didn't help him because I thought he was your husband. I wanted to smack the bitch. Even if he was (husband/friend/stranger in that situation what would it have mattered?), why does that mean you ignore the situation if the wife is a quarter of a block back with the little one. At least tell him the light's out and he'd better wait up for her.

Same intersection, different day, slightly after 5 pm -- so it was busy as hell with commuters. Plenty of 20, 30 & 40-something's with no children standing around waiting for their buses. Blind guy at curb doing same with his seeing-eye dog. Asshole drunk being quiet as hell about it so blind guy wouldn't know it knelt in front of dog putting his face (and liquor breath) in dog's face and holding its forelegs so it can't move but shoving it a little every now and then. Trained to be well-behaved dog trying to pull away and blind guy asking what's wrong and commanding it to stand. Everyone ignoring this until the bitch from NY comes along and sees it. Without a thought, I grab the drunk's shoulder and shove him off the dog right into the damned street yelling get the hell off that dog. (Fortunately, I trained my daughter to get behind me and put me between her and any danger on the street as soon as she could stand on her on two feet; we took a lot of buses and all that implies, sigh.) As I turned my head to explain to blind guy standing there wondering what the fuck was going on, drunk rushes me. Now he was so reeling drunk, he was on the verge of falling and passing out and not very scary really but in all that crowd who do you think steps in front of him so that he bounces off them instead of hitting me and says back off, bub with meaning -- a skinny little man who had to be about 90 if he was a day. The two of us (and my daughter) stood with the blind guy until his bus came. All the other assholes were still looking in every direction but in the direction of the commotion they couldn't possibly have missed. And I with a young child in tow should not have been the one out of that crowd to put a stop to it.

Aargh, people!!!

Oh, yeah, and I'm so sick of hearing about the Kitty Genovese case, I could puke. All these people heard was a woman screaming in NYC and they were supposed to do what exactly? Go out there and get themselves murdered with her? Call the cops. Sure, that's reasonable. Mostly (and remember in 1964 a lot of poor people didn't have telephones). But I've lived in neighborhoods myself where if I called 911 every time I heard a woman scream, I'd be dialing it 10 times a night. Little over a year ago, I lived near a college, between two frat houses, those college girls scream like they're getting raped just to flirt these days which I think is fucked up which in their book would only make me an old fuddy duddy. Call the cops? Nope. Did my best to ignore it. No way in hell to tell if it was a frat boy groupie or a chick in real trouble. Cops would have probably laughed at me. These kids parties spilled out into the streets and they did nothing to enforce either the open container laws or minority drinking laws. Wait, they did cosmetic bullshit -- putting fliers on our doors warning about open containers and did close down the oldest bar in Albany for serving minors -- whilst ignoring the ones far more popular with the college crowd, like the one on the corner where I lived.

I saw a girl get hit by a bus once. I'm no doctor, and I don't have a clue how to render even first aid. But I stopped, called 911, and then waited near the girl for the paramedics to come. Other passersby also stopped; some directed traffic away from the scene, while others held umbrellas over the girl (it was raining hard).

None of us could do much, but at the very least, we could stop, call for help, and make sure that help arrived. What's disturbing about this situation isn't that no one started performing surgery in the middle of the street, but that no one stopped to wait, to ward traffic away from the victim, to flag down the paramedics as they approached, etc. There's always something people can do, especially if it's a busy street and there's no guarantee that oncoming traffic will see the guy until it's too late.

And by the way, the more information you can give the 911 operator, the better prepared police and paramedics are when they arrive. Which means that if you're able to stick around, you can help a lot just by describing what you see.

Coming from what was once a small, "naive" city, I still remember my first trip to New York on business. We were clients checking out some new software and were out for dinner with the vendor. All of a sudden, one of the waiters is yelling for someone with first aid to help an apparent heart attack victim. All us Calgarians jumped up, only to be pulled back down by our hosts and warned: "Unless you're a doctor, you're bound to get sued. Stay put -- the ambulance will be here soon."

My desire to intervene in bad stuff really worries my husband. I used to believe all it would take is a vocal witness for a bad guy to stop and make a run for it. Too many stories these days about how good samaritans get the crap kicked out of them. It's made me rethink my strategy of how I get involved. As a chick of 5'3" and 115 lb, my cell phone and a safe distance seem like prudent help. However, that's not a very comforting strategy if I'm ever the one in need of help!

Just to add some tiny, anecdotal idealism:

When I fell asleep at the wheel going 80 down I-45 in Houston, Texas, on September 9, 2001, I rolled the vehicle 6 rotations (so I'm told). I never lost consciousness but I was in shock so my memories are fuzzy, to say the least. It was pouring rain outside. The truck ended up on its side, windows all shattered, of course. Many, many people stopped on the side of the road, put up umbrellas, threw the raincoats off their backs onto me, called 911. By the time I was Life Flighted to Hermann hospital, I had fifteen raincoats.

Houston is not a friendly town. They're among the worst drivers in this country. Everyone drives tired, rushed, and angry (case in point). Yet, all of these people stopped to do what they could in a crisis.

Although I don't subscribe to an organized religion or deity, I feel a sense of overwhelming gratitude that first and foremost - no one was involved in the accident but me - and second, that all of those people stopped.

And I am disgusted with the incident covered above.

Geeze Richard. What a bunch of excuses. People who go that far out of their way to excuse cowardice do so not because they believe what they say, but because when they see the coward they see themselves.

Donna, your answer is cowardly too, but as you seem to be the site's hardcore liberal, it really fits. Only you are far more agressive in your defense of it "Don't get involved, you may get hurt" is the motto of the coward. One small step away from "Don't fight back, it will only make them more mad", and then just one more tiny step away from helping shove your neighbors in the ovens if it spares you for just one more day.

All the fancy theories are fine, but when push comes to shove, City-folk, who tend to be very liberal, into entitlement, and into themselves, are far more likely to let this crap happen.

About a year and a half ago a semi-truck merged into me and nudged me off the highway. I skidded in two complete circles before tumbling down an embankment. I shouldn't be here today. I'm only alive because I was wearing my seatbelt incorrectly (otherwise my neck would have broken when the roof collapsed) and it didn't happen fifty yards further down the road (where I would have ended up in a river). When I landed my arm was trapped under my pickup. Where I was down the embankment my truck could not be seen from the highway.

I was in state of sheer panic for about a minute before I heard someone shouting "Are you okay?"
He called 911 and waited with me until the paramedics and the firefighters arrived. He left as soon as they had me on the backboard. Nobody got his name. All I know about him is that he wore workboots (feet were all I could see until they pulled the truck off me).

Even if you can't help beyond calling 911, even just talking to the person can make a huge difference. Hearing his voice and knowing that somebody saw me and had called 911 was reassuring beyond words.

Thanks stranger on I-95. You helped more than you'll ever know.

Richard Parker and Inquiring hit the main points very succinctly.

I get the sense that some of you feel it is a requirement that bystanders help out and give aid. How absurd (if that is the case).

"I get the sense that some of you feel it is a requirement that bystanders help out and give aid. How absurd (if that is the case)."

Absurd or not, it's the law many places. And why is it absurd? Would you feel it absurd if you were laying bleeding, watching people stroll by? Is it so hard to stop downloading MP3's onto your cellphone for 3 seconds while you call 911? Are you so late for a nail appointment?

Does Hartford not have a "failure to stop and render aid" law they could prosecute the people passing by that were caught on camera with?

Is there such a law anywhere?

Have you seen the last episode of Seinfeld?

Smarty, fuck you. It's obvious you didn't even read my posts. I gave two examples where I did stop and help. I pointed out that things are not always as they appear. The last fucking thing I am is cowardly. I've protected people in situations where others wouldn't. But because I'm realistic about the dangers in presuming someone's a victim and the inability to differeniate in sometimes between real screams and ordinary screams kinda puts the kibosh on that. (My background is varied; I've lived everywhere from what used to be called the ghetto to a town so small that K-12 was under one roof and, no, people are all the same.) Morally, it can be debated but no one should be required by law to put another's welfare above their own. Frankly, I should have put my daughter's welfare before that dog's but I reacted. In part, because I knew how well I had trained her to get where she'd be safe.

Here's an update. Seems the man will be permanently hospitalized:

http://www.courant.com/community/news/hfd/hc-arcetorres0611.artjun11,0,909745.story?track=rss