yet again my question remains unanswered.. not much help these last two semester
ID: 3458875 • Letter: Y
Question
yet again my question remains unanswered.. not much help these last two semester! what have changed? read the following article “The 1964 Kitty Genovese Tragedy: What Have We Learned?” by Harold Takooshian: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/not-just-bystander/201403/the-1964-kitty-genovese-tragedy-what-have-we-learned (Links Do you think that since Kitty Genève’s case, and the awareness of the bystander effect in social psychology has made an impact on how people react to situations when someone is in distress but is surrounded by people?
Explanation / Answer
I think that since Kitty Genève’s case, there has been quiet spread on the general awareness of the bystander effect in social psychology with all the research and experiments that have been done and improvised upon the many factors & variables which influence thattitudes , & also how the presence of a large group impacts how the people react to situations when someone who is in distress, in the presence of people around him.
A lot has been researched over the years which has lead us to learn new facts about the by stander effect and its variables in social psychology. There have been many types of researches which have contributed since the awareness of the kitty geneves case. Let us have a quick recollection on the various contributions the researchers have made to this date.
So, let us first begin by recollecting back about the by stander effect. The classic bystander effect stipulates that the people are inclined & tend to help others more when they are alone rather than when other by-standers are present along with them.
This article explores some of the research that has been conducted on the bystander effect ,the intervention that came after Darley and Latané’s classic study on the bystander effect.
In the following years, after Darley and Latané had conducted their experiment, psychologists were interested in investigating the bystander effect and what factors are likely to be involved in influencing its occurrence.
After a decade, the psychologists began to study the applicability of the bystander effect to social issues, which has been demonstrated in the more recent studies on issues suuch as the prosocial behaviors in an online chat setting and in a study pertaining to cyber bullying.
John Darley and Bibb Latané were the first psychologists to formulate and study the bystander effect.The key historical events that preceded the work of Darley and Latané can be summarized as follows :
The key event that occurred in the history of psychology was the creation of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) and since the establishment of the SPSSI, the social psychologists have been Closely focused on applying the science of psychology to better understand and solve social problems by looking at group dynamics and functioning of the groups.
Kurt Lewin was a key figure in the development of the SPSSI in 1936 . His main area of interest was in researching the ways that the social or groups function and also the influence the individual members of the group, he thought that this wasnecessary to solve the social problems.
He argued that the situation a person finds him or herself in is a significant determinant of how one will behave under the given circumstances (Mook, 2004).
Furthermore, Lewin’s contribution to theories on the motivational influences of behavior led social psychologists to think that motivates others to engage in prosocial behaviors (Hogg & Cooper, 2003).
This very focus on the motivational factors is the highlighting characteristic of the “cognitive revolution” that emerged in the 1950s and extended into the 1960s (Baumeister & Vohs, 2007).
The cognitive revolutions cognitive approach focuses on how the people think about themselves and the world around them; this very focus on cognition was very critical for the psychologists who were trying to understand the mental processes which were behind the individual’s behavior in groups.
The social psychologists at that time were very much interested in the factors that affect a person’s motivation to help others, so, what causes a person to not provide any help to someone in an emergency situation at all?
This question was prompted by a tragic event of Kitty Genève’s murder and rape case in 1964 and is was evident in Darley and Latané’s (1968) classic study on the bystander intervention.
Summarizing the historical context briefly once again at a glance,
the violent murder of a woman in New York City along with all of the above mentioned historical events lead to the research on the bystander effect:
the formation of the SPSSI made it more acceptable to study social issues in psychology;
Lewin’s research on the various ways and methods of group dynamics and social determinants of behavior provided the groundwork for the future psychologists (i.e., Darley & Latané, 1968);
and the cognitive revolution lead to the cognitive psychology , which mphasized the role of thinking and perception, which was used to explain certain behaviors in group settings.
Many future scientists conducted research that replicated Darley and Latané’s results and hence expanded the research on bystander intervention and expanded our knowledge on this very topic.
Two studies appear to be quiet representative of the research on bystander intervention in the year 1980.
One study conducted by Schwartz and Gottlieb (1980) rearchers examined anonymity as a mediating variable in the bystander effect.
second of the studies (i.e., Valentine, 1980) researched on the bystander intervention and other factors that may affect whether the bystander effect could be diminished. And so, Both of these studies represent an effort in the 1980s to further test bystander intervention by manipulating factors, other than only the number of bystanders, which may influence prosocial behaviors.
One of the more critical social issues that psychologists became interested in since Markey (2000) has been cyber bullying. In the 16 years since Markey’s research, Brody and Vangelisti (2016) showed that cyber bullying is a social issue relevant in our modern society. These researchers conducted studies on the relationship between the number of bystanders and perceived anonymity by asking participants in a survey to describe a friend’s past online bullying experience that they witnessed
The recent research concludes in reasoning that, sometimes, due to the presence of bystanders, the tendency towards the increase in helping, especially when in situations where the public self-awareness is increased through the use of accountability cues (e.g., a camera).
These findings contribute to the findings of other variables that influence the by stanfer effect.The social context that eliminates feelings of anonymity, like the presence of a camera or wearing a nametag. These cues trigger people to become aware that their actions can be ascribed to them an on individual level.
Hundreds of research articles have been published about the variables related to bystander helping behavior. Some of which we have discussed. Although significant gender differences have been found in the bystander intervention research, the results have been inconsistent with little explanation about the relationship that draws between the gender and bystander interventions.For instance, one study was aimed to find the relationship between conformity to masculine role norms and bystander intervention behavior.
The variables that influence bystander intervention behavior have been a significant area in psychological research for over four decades.
The bystander effect has been studied in hundreds of articles and is one of the most well-researched and consistent situational variables in social psychology.
The Preliminary research regarding the bystander effect investigated the willingness
and likelihood of a bystander to offer assistance in the presence of other individuals. That one simple phenomenon had numerous implications for the basis of research for social psychology and it has spawned hundreds of research articles which tried to explain the implications for human behavior.
Over these years, 40 years of research on this very topic exists. which has been used to examine the numerous variables that are related to how, when, and why bystanders get involved to offer assistance in emergency and non-emergency situations.
Numerous moderating and mediating variables have also been identified that since, that inform, affect and predict helping behavior including the personality, situational, individual and victim characteristics respectively.
The bottom line is that we are very much less likely to intervene when in groups, and this can be due to a variety of reasons.
The major key to overcoming the Bystander effect is two fold, which can be suggested as follows:
1) awareness and 2) competency.
Awareness:
Just knowing about the Bystander effect and how we can all fall victim to this phenomenon makes us less very likely to do so. We are wired to be by-standers, but just knowing about this makes us less likely to do so.
Competency:
Training employees in organozarional set ups in risk awareness and intervention skills makes them more likely to identify risks and actually intervene when they do recognize them. The need of the hour is to teach the children and adolescents their role in such situations.
To conclude, in this article we saw the historical context surrounding the well-known phenomenon of the bystander effect:
Historically, the formation of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social,
Kurt Lewin’s research on group dynamics and influences on prosocial behavior,
and the emergence of the cognitive revolution paved the way for research on why no bystander intervened to help one woman in New York City in 1964 as she was stabbed to death
. The bystander effect first demonstrated experimentally by Darley and Latané in 1968 was a classic study that changed future research on prosocial behavior.
we also saw how the research that came after Darley and Latané investigated the other variables that influence helping behaviors.
And last but not the least, the beginning of the 21st century marked a time of increased awareness of the relevance of psychological research towards solving the contemporary social issues,by research on the bystander effect in situations like online chat rooms and social media cyber bullying.
Now, with all these things discussed, it is clear that Darley and Latané’s classic study along with the Kitty Genève’s case, the bystander effect is still highly relevant to the field of modern psychology and has made quiet the impact in creating awareness among the people about this issue and the nature of learning the competency to act in such situations is still under development.
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