What types of people are bystanders most likely to help? If you were going to try to increase prosocial helping behaviour, what are the four things you might try?

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According to John Darley and Bibb Latané, what are the two primary mechanisms that may be responsible for the failure of bystanders to help during emergencies? Describe each of them. What types of people are bystanders most likely to help? If you were going to try to increase prosocial helping behaviour, what are the four things you might try?

      Modern concern with bystander behaviour began with the brutal rape and murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964, New York City: an act witnessed by thirty-eight of her neighbours, none of whom did so much as lift a telephone to alert authorities (Myers, 1999). More recently, the killing of 10 year old Damilola Taylor of North Peckham, ignored by those who passed as he bled to death . Incidents like these have led to studies of  why we live in a 'walk on by' society. Two social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley were intrigued by the failure of bystanders to intervene in the Kitty Genovese murder and began research on bystander response to emergencies. I will discuss their findings and possible ways of increasing prosocial helping behaviour.

        Latané and Darley conducted several experiments on bystander intervention and from their findings they created a cognitive 5-stage model of bystander behaviour to show how people decide whether to help in a situation or not. If the bystander answers no to any question, then no help will be given. The model starts off with whether the bystander notices the event, if so, is it an emergency, they then have to assume responsibility and decide that they know what to do. If they get this far then they have to implement their decision and help the person in need (Passer & Smith, 2001).  There are two principal reasons why people decide no: diffusion of responsibility, if you are the only one in an emergency situation, the responsibility to help lies on your shoulders alone. But if there are other people around, you may assume that someone else will come to the rescue. The other reason is social comparison, a state of pluralistic ignorance can develop whereby other people not responding makes you think that the situation is not an emergency (Rubin, 1974).

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        The nature of the helper and the nature of the victim are shown to have an effect on whether we help or not. Gender, personality, dress, beliefs and the physical state of the helper are some factors that can influence a person’s decision. A meta-analysis based on 99 studies about the influence of gender on helping behaviour has shown that men helped more often than women did and were more likely to help women than men. Women also received more help than men (Eagly & Crowley, 1986).

        The nature of the victim influences the helpfulness of the bystander ...

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