Mr. Buckley assumed personal responsibility for the situation. He stated, “I was the only one around so it was either me or nobody”. This observation and the subsequent help offered reflect the notion of diffusion of responsibility. This paradoxically suggests the more people present in an emergency, the less likely any of them are to help. Supporting this idea are the studies conducted by Latane and Darley, (1968,1970) and Latane and Rodin, (1969). Results demonstrated people were less likely to act prosocially if they were accompanied by others, with the exception of a friend. Reasons for this behaviour are people may feel embarrassed to stand out from a group for fear they may be overreacting to an event that does not warrant help. Being accompanied by a friend may reduce this as friends may be less likely to ridicule you if it turns out help was not needed. Perhaps consulting with a friend prior to helping may help a person decide whether action is needed. Therefore, “social blunders” may be more easily avoided. It has even been shown that the mere perception of others being present is enough to inhibit helping behaviour. (Latane and Darley, 1968). This is also known as the audience effect. It appears it is not the factors that are present in the situation that help bystanders to determine whether help is needed, but the individual perception of them. For example, a person who is unconscious through severe intoxication of alcohol may not receive help. It may appear they are asleep. Even if bystanders do realise the person is unconscious due to alcohol, they still may not offer help. A belief he or she deserves to get whatever the outcome is may arise as the situation they are in is seen as self-inflicted. This explanation of not intervening to help is known as the just-world hypothesis. Alternatively, this notion is reflected in the saying, “What goes around comes around”. By speculation, Mr. Buckley may have thought the minibus was travelling to fast and so deserved to crash. If this were true, it still did not stop him from helping. Perhaps other factors overcame this thought to prompt him to help. Alternatively, there may have been a sharp bend that the driver did not gauge properly so he may have thought this was not intentionally self-inflicted behaviour and helped.
Pilliavin’s bystander-calculus model may account for Mr. Buckley’s helping behaviour. Arousal caused by witnessing an emergency needs to be defined as negative and cause significant distress to the individual before help is considered. Mr. Buckley reported he “thought the bus was full of kids-My stomach sank. I felt sick…..”This physiological state is clearly unpleasant and distressing. A final cost-reward analysis is calculated. It is proposed if the rewards outweigh the costs, help will be offered. In Mr. Buckley’s instance possible costs may have been danger to his own life as the minibus was hanging over the edge of the cliff. Other disadvantages may have been, time consumed reporting the incident to the police involving witness statements, guilt for not helping and continuing feelings of discomfort. Rewards may have been calculated as praise he would receive from others for helping and media attention. This would raise his self esteem and undoubtedly make him feel better of himself. However, Mr. Buckley may have helped to reduce his own discomfort and receive fame for his heroic actions. It is worth noting if this can be considered helping behaviour at all. It is essentially a selfish act to reduce his own discomfort. Therefore, this behaviour can definitely not be defined as altruistic. This highlights the problems in defining helping behaviour and the reasons why so many terms exist so as to capture the nature of helping behaviour as defined by its underlying motives. Another flaw within the model is it implies equal weight is given to each cost or reward. One, single reward may outweigh the multiple costs. For example, brief fame afforded by the media in Mr. Buckley’s case may have outweighed the danger to his life and the costs involved in police statements. Individual appraisal of the weight these costs and rewards carry will influence the overall decision to help.
Other factors contributing to the decision of a bystander to offer help are feelings of competence, gender and time. Mr. Buckley may have felt competent in successfully offering help as his occupation is an AA patrolman. Therefore, his past experience of helping others with vehicle problems may have helped in this situation. He may have thought that at least he may have been able to fix the minibus if the crash was not too bad. Attribution theory may also have played a role in his decision to help. His occupation as an AA patrolman, used to helping others may have led him to internalise the attribute that he is helpful. Therefore this may increase the likelihood of this occurring in the future.
Time available to bystanders has been shown to influence help received by those who need it. Darley and Batson, (1973), demonstrated participants who were early for a lecture, were more likely to help a victim of a fall than those who were on time or late. Therefore, time available appears to influence whether help is given. It is not known whether Mr. Buckley was in a hurry but other factors may have overridden this if he were. For example, feeling sick at the thought children may have been injured. Another point worth noting is would time available really be considered if you had just witnessed such a frightening event as a minibus crash? Different levels of stress are likely to be involved in witnessing a minibus crashing and someone falling over. A minibus crash may be considered a more horrific and unusual event compared to this. Participants in Darley and Batson’s study may have had more time to consider if they had time themselves to stop and help as the incident was not that urgent. Mr. Buckley was in a more serious incident that involved the need for a quicker decision to be made. If he had not done this, the minibus would have likely fallen over the edge of the cliff. This demonstrates experimental evidence may be lacking in ecological validity and can not always be applied to real life.
Gender can influence helping behaviour as well. Latane and Dabbs, (1975), discovered males are more likely to help females than the other way round. Mr. Buckley did help a female although he did not know the gender of the driver until after he had decided to help. However, hearing cries for help would have indicated a female from cues in her voice. This may have helped in the final stages of consolidating the decision to help.