The term spectator effect refers to the phenomenon in which the higher the number of people present, the less likely it is that people will help a person in need. When an emergency occurs, observers are more likely to take action when there are few or no other witnesses. Being part of a large crowd ensures that no one has to take responsibility for any action (or inaction). Interpretation: Once a situation has been noticed, a spectator may be encouraged to intervene if they interpret the incident as an emergency. According to the principle of social influence, passers-by monitor the reactions of other people in an emergency situation to see if others think it is necessary to intervene. If it is determined that other people are not responding to the situation, passers-by will interpret the situation as not an emergency and will not intervene. This is an example of pluralistic ignorance or social proof. As for the smoking experience, they were still unlikely to report it, although the students in the groups clearly noticed the smoke that had become so thick that it obscured their vision, irritated their eyes or made them cough. Only one disease participant in the group reported smoke within the first four minutes, and by the end of the experiment, no one in five out of eight groups had reported the smoke. In groups that did not report the smoke, interpretations of its cause and the likelihood that it was truly threatening were also less serious, with no one suggesting the fire as a possible cause, but some preferred less serious explanations of how the air conditioning leaked. [9] Similarly, interpretations of context have played an important role in people`s reactions to a man and woman fighting in the streets. When the woman shouted, “Move away from me; I don`t know you”,” passers-by intervened 65% of the time, but only 19% of the time, the woman shouted: “Get away from me; I don`t know why I ever married you. [6] In the United States, Good Samaritan laws were introduced to protect bystanders who acted in good faith.

Many organizations include training for viewers. For example, the U.S. Department of the Army conducts training for viewers regarding sexual assault. Some organizations regularly organize training for passers-by on safety issues. Others organized public training on diversity issues. [33] [a] Organizations such as American universities also use witness research to improve viewers` attitudes in cases of rape. Examples include the interact sexual assault prevention program[34] and the Green Dot program. [35] Others have criticized these laws for being punitive and criminalizing the problem they are supposed to solve. [36] The spectator effect became a subject of considerable interest after the brutal murder of American Kitty Genovese in 1964. Genovese, who was returning late from work, was brutally assaulted and sexually assaulted by a man armed with a knife as she walked home from a parking lot next door to her apartment complex. As the New York Times reported two weeks later, for more than half an hour, 38 respectable, law-abiding people heard or saw the man attack them three times.

The voices and lights of passers-by in the neighboring apartments interrupted the murderer and frightened him twice, but each time he came back and stabbed them again. None of the 38 witnesses called police during the attack, and only one passerby contacted authorities after Kitty Genovese`s death. (In 2016, after the death of assailant Winston Moseley, the New York Times published an article stating that the number of witnesses and what they saw or heard was exaggerated, that there had been only two attacks, that two bystanders had called the police, and that another bystander had tried to comfort the dying woman.) Latané and Darley attributed the spectator effect to two factors: the spread of responsibility and social influence. The perceived broadcast of responsibility means that the more viewers there are, the less personal responsibility individuals will have to act. Social influence means that individuals monitor the behavior of their fellow human beings to determine how they should behave. Timothy Hart and Ternace Miethe used data from the National Criminal Victimization Survey (NCVS) and found that in 65% of the violent victimizations in the data, a viewer was present. Their presence was more common in physical assault (68%), which accounted for the majority of these violent victimizations, and less likely in robberies (49%) and sexual assaults (28%). The actions of bystanders were most often judged by victims as “neither carers nor hurtful” (48%), followed by “help” (37%), “suffering” (10%) and “help and suffering” (3%).

Half of the attacks, in which a passer-by was present, took place in the evening when the victim and the spectator were strangers. [14] The findings of Mark Levine and Simon Crowther (2008) showed that increasing group size inhibited intervention in a street violence scenario when passers-by were strangers, but encouraged intervention when passers-by were friends. They also found that when gender identity stands out, group size encourages intervention when passers-by and victims share social category membership. In addition, group size interacted with context-specific norms that inhibit and encourage help. The spectator effect is not a generic consequence of the increase in group size. When viewers share psychological relationships at the group level, group size can both encourage and inhibit help. [18] Darley and Latané (1968) conducted research on the dissemination of responsibility. [23] The results suggest that people who believe other people are around are less likely or slower to help a victim in an emergency because they believe someone else will take responsibility. People may also not take responsibility for a situation, depending on the context.

You can assume that other passers-by are better qualified to help, such as doctors or police officers, and that their intervention would be useless. They may also be afraid of being replaced by a senior assistant, offering unwanted help, or facing the legal consequences of offering inferior and potentially dangerous help. For this reason, some laws, such as the “Good Samaritan Laws,” limit the liability of those who attempt to provide medical and non-medical services in an emergency. People may also have fears of evaluation and fear of losing face to other viewers. An alternative explanation was proposed by Stanley Milgram, who hypothesized that viewers` insensitive behavior was caused by the strategies they had used in everyday life to cope with information overload. This idea has been supported to varying degrees by empirical research. [13] Latané and Darley (1970) formulated a five-step model to explain why bystanders sometimes provide assistance in emergencies and sometimes not. Spectator apathy is a symptom of the spectator effect. The spectator effect occurs when passers-by do not intervene, when they watch someone become a victim or need help.

For example, passers-by who see a child being forced into a car by a stranger cannot intervene to help or contact the police.