It's also called Genovese syndrome, which is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases where individuals do not offer any means of help in an emergency situation to the victim when other people are present. The probability of help has in the past been thought to be inversely related to the number of bystanders; in other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help.
I recently learned about this phenomenon from watching an episode of Law & Order: SVU, an episode called Spectacle. Where several college students are watching a university internet feed. They are horrified to see a man attacking a woman, but all assume someone else will call 911.
Watching that also reminded me of a April 2010 article in the news about a women who was being attacked. A homeless man, Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax noticed and came to her aid only to get stab many times and left on the sidewalk in Queens for hours, slowing dying. At least twenty people walked by while he was dying and not one of them tried to helped him.
There are many cases in which bystanders ignore or simply refuse to help someone in need for one reason or another. Honesty, I think it's horrible...why wouldn't anyone not try to help someone? Or at least called 911 and tell them what they think is happening or is happening. It's better to be safe than sorry. Hell, if they were the ones needing help, wouldn't they too want someone to give them a hand? Instead of just ignoring them or standing there watching like nothing is wrong?
Makes me wonder if people even have a conscious. Or even feel guilty when they realize that they didn't do anything.
 DamnBlackHeart · Sun Feb 13, 2011 @ 08:57pm · 0 Comments |
