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Does being aware of the existence of the bystander effect reduce its likelihood of occurring? How would you test this? It's hard to think of a test which wouldn't make it very obvious what was being tested and therefore mess with the results.
(Brought to you by reading the bit in Thinking Fast and Slow where people continue to underestimate the likelihood of bystander effects even after being told about them, and especially when predicting their own behaviour, and then thinking "but of course it'd be different for me, because I know that bystander effect is a thing, so would consciously make an effort to avoid it", and then wondering whether there's any validity in that at all.)
(Brought to you by reading the bit in Thinking Fast and Slow where people continue to underestimate the likelihood of bystander effects even after being told about them, and especially when predicting their own behaviour, and then thinking "but of course it'd be different for me, because I know that bystander effect is a thing, so would consciously make an effort to avoid it", and then wondering whether there's any validity in that at all.)
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Date: 2015-10-24 10:45 am (UTC)From:I wonder if this is something you might learn best by direct experience.
There was an incident some years ago when I was on a bus and a man (who claimed to remember me from school) was being verbally abusive and touching my breast. I responded by being shouty/sweary/removing his hand from my body. Everybody around us ignored it, though I would have been being loud enough by the end that they would have been aware of what was going on. I'd known about the bystander effect before then, but had either forgotten about it or just wasn't able to apply it when it would have been useful. I *think* in a similiar situation I'd now remember to tell specific people to do specific things.