bystander effect

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present, compared to when they are alone; the effect was first investigated by John Darley and Bibb Latané following the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York, which was reported — inaccurately, subsequent research suggested — to have been witnessed by dozens of neighbours who failed to intervene; Darley and Latané's experiments demonstrated that the presence of others reduces helping through two key mechanisms: diffusion of responsibility, in which each bystander assumes someone else will act, and pluralistic ignorance, in which bystanders who are uncertain about whether an event constitutes an emergency look to others for cues, and each person's failure to act is misread by others as evidence that no emergency exists; the bystander effect has implications for emergency response training, workplace intervention in harassment and discrimination, and the design of online platforms where large audiences can witness harmful content