Transcription of BYSTANDER INTERVENTION IN EMERGENCIES
1 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology1968, Vol. 8, No. 4, 377-383 BYSTANDER INTERVENTION IN EMERGENCIES :DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY3 JOHN M. BARLEYNew York UniversityBIBB LATANfiColumbia UniversitySs overheard an epileptic seizure. They believed either that they alone heardthe emergency, or that 1 or 4 unseen others were also present. As predictedthe presence of other bystanders reduced the individual's feelings of personalresponsibility and lowered his speed of reporting (p < .01). In groups ofsize 3, males reported no faster than females, and females reported no slowerwhen the 1 other BYSTANDER was a male rather than a female.
2 In general,personality and background measures were not predictive of helping. Bystanderinaction in real-life EMERGENCIES is often explained by "apathy," "alienation,"and "anomie." This experiment suggests that the explanation may lie morein the BYSTANDER 's response to other observers than in his indifference tothe years ago, a young woman wasstabbed to death in the middle of a street ina residential section of New York City. Al-though such murders are not entirely routine,the incident received little public attentionuntil several weeks later when the New YorkTimes disclosed another side to the case: atleast 38 witnesses had observed the attack and none had even attempted to the attacker took more than halfan hour to kill Kitty Genovese, not one ofthe 38 people who watched from the safetyof their own apartments came out to assisther.
3 Not one even lifted the telephone tocall the police (Rosenthal, 1964).Preachers, professors, and news commenta-tors sought the reasons for such apparentlyconscienceless and inhumane lack of interven-tion. Their conclusions ranged from "moraldecay," to "dehumanization produced bythe urban environment," to "alienation,""anomie," and "existential despair." An anal-ysis of the situation, however, suggests thatfactors other than apathy and indifferencewere person witnessing an emergency situa-tion, particularly such a frightening and1 This research was supported in part by NationalScience Foundation Grants GS1238 and Darley contributed materially to the designof the experiment and ran the subjects, and she andThomas Moriarty analyzed the data.
4 RichardNisbett, Susan Millman, Andrew Gordon, andNorma Neiman helped in preparing the one as a stabbing, is in are obvious humanitarian norms abouthelping the victim, but there are also rationaland irrational fears about what might happento a person who does intervene (Milgram &Hollander, 1964). "I didn't want to getinvolved," is a familiar comment, and behindit lies fears of physical harm, public embar-rassment, involvement with police procedures,lost work days and jobs, and other certain circumstances, the norms favor-ing INTERVENTION may be weakened, leadingbystanders to resolve the conflict in the direc-tion of nonintervention.
5 One of these circum-stances may be the presence of other on-lookers. For example, in the case above, eachobserver, by seeing lights and figures in otherapartment house windows, knew that otherswere also watching. However, there was noway to tell how the other observers werereacting. These two facts provide severalreasons why any individual may have delayedor failed to help. The responsibility for help-ing was diffused among the observers; therewas also diffusion of any potential blame fornot taking action; and finally, it was possiblethat somebody, unperceived, had alreadyinitiated helping only one BYSTANDER is present in anemergency, if help is to come, it must comefrom him.
6 Although he may choose to ignoreit (out of concern for his personal safety,or desires "not to get involved"), any pres-377,178 JOHN M. DARLEY AND BIBB LATANTC sure to intervene focuses uniquely on there are several observers present,however, the pressures to intervene do notfocus on any one of the observers; insteadthe responsibility for INTERVENTION is sharedamong all the onlookers and is not uniqueto any one. As a result, no one second possibility is that potential blamemay be diffused. However much we may wishto think that an individual's moral behavioris divorced from considerations of personalpunishment or reward, there is both theoryand evidence to the contrary (Aronfreed,1964; Miller & Bollard, 1941, Whiting &Child, 19S3).
7 It is perfectly reasonable toassume that, under circumstances of groupresponsibility for a punishable act, the pun-ishment or blame that accrues to any oneindividual is often slight or , if others are known to be present,but their behavior cannot be closely observed,any one BYSTANDER can assume that one ofthe other observers is already taking actionto end the emergency. Therefore, his ownintervention would be only redundant per-haps harmfully or confusingly so. Thus,given the presence of other onlookers whosebehavior cannot be observed, any given by-stander can rationalize his own inaction byconvincing himself that "somebody else mustbe doing something.
8 "These considerations lead to the hypothesisthat the more bystanders to an emergency,the less likely, or the more slowly, any onebystander will intervene to provide aid. Totest this propostion it would be necessary tocreate a situation in which a realistic"emergency" could plausibly occur. Each sub-ject should also be blocked from com-municating with others to prevent his gettinginformation about their behavior during theemergency. Finally, the experimental situa-tion should allow for the assessment of thespeed and frequency of the subjects' reactionto the emergency.
9 The experiment reportedbelow attempted to fulfill these A college student arrived in the labora-tory and was ushered into an individual room fromwhich a communication system would enable himto talk to the other participants. It was explainedto him that he was to take part in a discussionabout personal problems associated with college lifeand that the discussion would be held over theintercom system, rather than face-to-face, in orderto avoid embarrassment by preserving the anonym-ity of the subjects.
10 During the course of the dis-cussion, one of the other subjects underwent whatappeared to be a very serious nervous seizure simi-lar to epilepsy. During the fit it was impossible forthe subject to talk to the other discussants or tofind out what, if anything, they were doing aboutthe emergency. The dependent variable was thespeed with which the subjects reported the emer-gency to the experimenter. The major independentvariable was the number of people the subjectthought to be in the discussion Fifty-nine female and thirteen male stu-dents in introductory psychology courses at NewYork University were contacted to take part in anunspecified experiment as part of a class Upon arriving for the experiment, thesubject found himself in a long corridor with doorsopening off it to several small rooms.
