RECENTLY THERE SEEM TO HAVE BEEN many attacks on people as crowds of witnesses stood by, failing to even TRY to intervene.
This happens to adults and to students in schools from elementary to university.
This aberration of what older Americans were taught is known as the Bystander Effect.
Apparently it is nothing new.
WHILE I AM CERTAIN THIS is not a unique to the U.S. – Germany and Japan in World War 2 proved that – it became a “named condition” following the attack, rape, and murder of Kitty Genovese.
The phenomenon, called the Bystander Effect or the Genovese Syndrome, attempts to explain why someone witnessing a crime would not help the victim.
Psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley made their careers studying the Bystander Effect and have shown in clinical experiments that witnesses are less likely to help a crime victim if there are other witnesses. The more witnesses, the less likely any one person will intervene.
Only two neighbors have been shown to behave at the time of the murder in the way the (New York) Times claimed 38 people did. One of those was Karl Ross.
Intoxicated that night, Ross heard noises and after deliberation, cracked open his door to investigate. He saw Genovese laying on the ground, still alive and attempting to speak, and Moseley stabbing her. He shut the door and called a friend to ask what to do. The friend said not to get involved.
Ross eventually climbed out of his window and went to a neighbors apartment. He called the police after hearing Sophie Farrar call for someone to do so. Ross’ explanation—“I didn’t want to get involved”—became the famous rejoinder of the Bystander Effect.1
RIDGEWOOD NJ - Police and school officials have opened an investigation into a troubling cyberbullying incident that led to the severe beating of a teenager on school property, allegedly at the hands of other Ridgewood High School students.
Some students who witnessed the attack recorded the violence instead of helping the student, according to schools Superintendent Daniel Fishbein.2
Four teenagers have been charged after an English Montreal School Board student was attacked at a Rivière-des-Prairies park earlier this week.
The attack was captured on a cellphone video, in which four people can be seen attacking another person. All four attackers were identified as EMSB students and were suspended indefinitely on Wednesday.
The victim is a Grade 9 student at the board's Lester B. Pearson High School.3
The horrifying moment a student was knocked unconscious by a kick to the face has been caught on camera.
Spectators got out their phones and jeered on a teen who was seen violently attacking another student much smaller than him.
The one-sided fight took place in Logan County in Arkansas and police are now investigating.
The footage shows a much larger teen attacking a smaller student - while friends of the larger boy watch on and cheer.
Shockingly none of the crowd step in to help and instead get out their phones to film the incident.4
PERHAPS because we have mass communications these days, and perhaps because so many people are carrying “smart phones” to record what is happening around them, we more often hear about bystanders infected by the Bystander Effect.
That is, admittedly, slightly less offensive than the “mob effect” where one or two people rally others to attack usually a minority; Jews in Germany, blacks in the U.S. are just two examples.
Still, as a U.S. citizen I am embarrassed by people infected with the Bystander Effect.
Granted, it may seem foolish for one person to try and save another being attacked by a group, but if there are other bystanders that one person’s actions might cause others to come to the victim’s aid. All it takes is one person to step up and do what is right.
We need to remember Pastor Martin Niemöller’s poem about the nazis:
- First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Niemöller survived seven years in a nazi concentration camp and died in 1984.5
If we fail to interfere with attacks on others, if we succumb to the Bystander Effect we may find ourselves as did Niemöller – there was no one to come to his – our – rescue.
Mob attacks are not limited to any particular group – left or right – or age. The attacks basically are bullying in the extreme. Pick on the little person, on the newcomer, on the “different” person – the difference can be anything just as long as it is obvious.
Bullying and unprovoked attacks – e.g., attacks on Jews in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe – seem to be increasing.
As long as we are infected by the Bystander Effect things only can get worse.
The sage Hillel said “In a place where there is no man, strive to be a man.” In other words, if no one else will step in, be the first to act. (Sometimes Hillel’s quote is “Where there is no leader strive to be the leader"; lead the effort to save a person from injury or death.)6
Sources
1. https://www.history.com/topics/kitty-genovese
2. http://tinyurl.com/y7ne4x6h
3. http://tinyurl.com/yb7lsg79
4. http://tinyurl.com/y98qhllh
5. http://tinyurl.com/z8kll4h
6. Pirkei Avot, Chap. 2, verse 5
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment