Bystander Effect Essay Examples

An Exploration of the Bystander Effect
What is the Bystander Effect? What gives a bully power? What allows a murder to take place in broad daylight without any intervention from those looking on? What makes a country silent as millions of its citizens are sent to their death under the command of a tyrant? The answer to all these questions is a phenomenon known as the Bystander Effect, in which people are less likely to come to the aid of someone in distress when there are others present. This attitude is born when one believes that other passersby will provide help to the victim, and therefore he or she has less responsibility to intervene. While already unethical when practiced by an individual, it is when this passivity is adopted by an …show more content…
The values of these views have common ideas and merge fairly easily, however, I do believe that there is some views are inferior to others. For example, it is not the internet that is a cause of greater diffusion of responsibility; it is merely another portal through which humans may exercise their inevitable character flaws. It is also my opinion that while the Bystander Effect should be taught against from a young age, it should not be the legal system that decides whether or not an individual should intervene in a dire situation.
What is a possible argument concerning the Bystander Effect? The Bystander Effect has been used as an explanation for many events throughout history, but I believe that the true motivation behind bystander apathy is not the quantity of people, but the attitudes of those people. Humans mirror the emotions they see in others, and they follow the actions of the loudest person; if one neighbor had reacted to Kitty Genovese’s murder, it is very possible that the reactions of the other neighbors might have been more alarmed than they