So what do we do?

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

- Edmund Burke

We had a particularly interesting lecture in my psychology class yesterday. We talked about conformity. I know, I know, we live in America. We're all individuals. For all that, we still do a lot of conforming. We pay attention to social norms. Like, we wear clothing when we're in public. That's conformity. A very good type of conformity if I may say so (and since this is my blog, I may). There are bad types of conformity as well. Dangerous types. A few aspects of this subject were discussed in my class and I wanted to talk a little bit about those. Partly for the reason that as people are made aware of these issues, they are less likely to happen.

Call this a public service announcement.

One aspect we talked about is called The Bystander Effect. This is a psychological phenomenon where persons are less likely to intervene in an emergency situation when others are present than when they are alone. The most famous illustration of this phenomenon was the story of Kitty Genovese. It happened before I was born but I remember hearing the story. Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death outside her apartment building in 1964 by a mentally ill man. The murder took place over a period of about thirty minutes, during which at least 38 alleged "witnesses" failed to help the victim. Each of these "witnesses" easily identified the man when he was caught but not one of them in the 30 minutes of the attack so much as picked up the phone and dialed the police (this was before 911).

The most common explanation is Diffusion of Responsibility: that with others present, observers all assume that someone else is going to intervene and so they each individually refrain from doing anything. People may also assume that other bystanders may be more qualified to help and their intervention would thus be unneeded. And sometimes that's the case, but more often than not, this means that nobody does anything. I'm sure I've been guilty of this as much as anybody. I think I'd prefer to make sure my assistance isn't needed instead of just assuming. What was found though, is that people who are aware of these phenomenae are less likely to allow these things to happen.

So, now you're aware.