Editing Bystander effect (section)

====Emergency versus non-emergency situations====
Latané and Darley performed three experiments to test bystander behavior in non-[[emergency]] situations.<ref name="Darley">Darley, J. M., & Latane, B. (1970). ''The unresponsive bystander: why doesn't he help?'' New York: Appleton Century Crofts.{{ISBN?}}{{page needed|date=October 2020}}</ref> Their results indicated that the way in which the subjects were asked for help mattered. In one condition, subjects asked a bystander for his or her name. More people provided an answer when the students gave their name first. In another condition, the students asked bystanders for a dime. When the student gave an explanation, such as saying that their wallet had been stolen, the percentage of people giving assistance was higher (72%) than when the student just asked for a dime (34%). Additional research by Faul, Mark, et al., using data collected by EMS officials when responding to an emergency, indicated that the response of bystanders was correlated with the health severity of the situation.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Faul | first1 = M. | last2 = Aikman | first2 = S. N. | last3 = Sasser | first3 = S. M. | year = 2016 | title = Bystander Intervention Prior to The Arrival of Emergency Medical Services: Comparing Assistance across Types of Medical Emergencies | journal = Prehospital Emergency Care | volume =  20| issue = 3| pages =  317–323| doi = 10.3109/10903127.2015.1088605 | pmid = 26807490 | pmc = 4933010 }}</ref>

According to Latané and Darley, there are five characteristics of emergencies that affect bystanders:<ref name="Darley" />
# Emergencies involve threat of harm or actual harm
# Emergencies are unusual and rare
# The type of action required in an emergency differs from situation to situation
# Emergencies cannot be predicted or expected
# Emergencies require immediate action

Due to these five characteristics, bystanders go through cognitive and behavioural processes:
# ''Notice'' that something is going on
# ''Interpret'' the situation as being an emergency
# ''Degree of responsibility'' felt
# ''Form of assistance''
# ''Implement the action choice''

''Notice'':
To test the concept of "noticing", Latane and Darley (1968) staged an emergency using Columbia University students. The students were placed in a room—either alone, with two strangers or with three strangers to complete a questionnaire while they waited for the experimenter to return. While they were completing the questionnaire, smoke was pumped into the room through a wall vent to simulate an emergency. When students were working alone they noticed the smoke almost immediately (within 5 seconds). However, students that were working in groups took longer (up to 20 seconds) to notice the smoke. Latané and Darley claimed this phenomenon could be explained by the social norm of what is considered polite etiquette in public. In most western cultures, politeness dictates that it is inappropriate to idly look around. This may indicate that a person is nosy or rude. As a result, passers-by are more likely to be keeping their attention to themselves when around large groups than when alone. People who are alone are more likely to be conscious of their surroundings and therefore more likely to notice a person in need of assistance.

''Interpret'':
Once a situation has been noticed, a bystander may be encouraged to intervene if they interpret the incident as an emergency. According to the principle of [[Conformity#Informational influence|social influence]], bystanders monitor the reactions of other people in an emergency situation to see if others think that it is necessary to intervene. If it is determined that others are not reacting to the situation, bystanders will interpret the situation as not an emergency and will not intervene. This is an example of [[pluralistic ignorance]] or [[social proof]]. Referring to the smoke experiment, even though students in the groups had clearly noticed the smoke which had become so thick that it was obscuring their vision, irritating their eyes or causing them to cough, they were still unlikely to report it. Only one participant in the group condition reported the smoke within the first four minutes, and by the end of the experiment, no-one from five of eight groups had reported the smoke at all. In the groups that did not report the smoke, the interpretations of its cause, and the likelihood that it was genuinely threatening was also less serious, with no-one suggesting fire as a possible cause, but some preferring less serious explanations, such as the air-conditioner was leaking.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Latané | first1 = B | last2 = Darley | first2 = J.M. | year = 1968 | title = Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies | journal = Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | volume = 10 | issue = 3| pages = 308–324 | doi=10.1037/h0026570| pmid = 5704479 | s2cid = 28550502 }}</ref>
Similarly, interpretations of the context played an important role in people's reactions to a man and woman fighting in the street. When the woman yelled, "Get away from me; I don't know you," bystanders intervened 65 percent of the time, but only 19 percent of the time when the woman yelled, "Get away from me; I don't know why I ever married you."<ref name=Meyers />

General bystander effect research was mainly conducted in the context of non-dangerous, non-violent emergencies. A study (2006) tested bystander effect in emergency situations to see if they would get the same results from other studies testing non-emergencies. In situations with low potential danger, significantly more help was given when the person was alone than when they were around another person. However, in situations with high potential danger, participants confronted with an emergency alone or in the presence of another person were similarly likely to help the victim.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Fischer | first1 = P. | last2 = Greitemeyer | first2 = T. | last3 = Pollozek | first3 = F. | last4 = Frey | first4 = D. | year = 2006 | title = The unresponsive bystander: Are bystanders more responsive in dangerous emergencies? | journal = European Journal of Social Psychology | volume = 36 | issue = 2| pages = 267–278 | doi = 10.1002/ejsp.297 }}</ref> This suggests that in situations of greater seriousness, it is more likely that people will interpret the situation as one in which help is needed and will be more likely to intervene.

''Degree of responsibility'':
Darley and Latané determined that the degree of responsibility a bystander feels is dependent on three things:
# Whether or not they feel the person is deserving of help
# The competence of the bystander
# The relationship between the bystander and the victim

''Forms of assistance'':
There are two categories of assistance as defined by Latané and Darley:
# Direct intervention: directly assisting the victim
# ''Detour'' intervention. Detour intervention refers to reporting an emergency to the authorities (i.e. the police, fire department)

''Implementation'':
After going through steps 1–4, the bystander must implement the action of choice.

In one study done by Abraham S. Ross, the effects of increased responsibility on bystander intervention were studied by increasing the presence of children. This study was based on the reaction of 36 male undergraduates presented with emergency situations. The prediction was that the intervention would be at its peak due to presence of children around those 36 male undergraduate participants. This was experimented and showed that the prediction was not supported, and was concluded as "the type of study did not result in significant differences in intervention."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Ross |first=Abraham |title=Effect of increase responsibility on bystander intervention: presence of children |journal=[[Journal of Personality and Social Psychology]] |volume=19 |issue=3 |year=1971 |pages=306–310 |doi=10.1037/h0031459}}</ref>

A [[meta-analysis]] (2011) of the bystander effect<ref>{{cite journal | pmid = 21534650 | doi=10.1037/a0023304 | volume=137 | issue=4 | title=The bystander-effect: a meta-analytic review on bystander intervention in dangerous and non-dangerous emergencies | journal=Psychol Bull | pages=517–537 | last1 = Fischer | first1 = P | last2 = Krueger | first2 = JI | last3 = Greitemeyer | first3 = T | last4 = Vogrincic | first4 = C | last5 = Kastenmüller | first5 = A | last6 = Frey | first6 = D | last7 = Heene | first7 = M | last8 = Wicher | first8 = M | last9 = Kainbacher | first9 = M| year=2011 | s2cid=9855957 }}</ref> reported that "The bystander effect was attenuated when situations were perceived as dangerous (compared with non-dangerous), perpetrators were present (compared with non-present), and the costs of intervention were physical (compared with non-physical). This pattern of findings is consistent with the arousal-cost-reward model, which proposes that dangerous emergencies are recognized faster and more clearly as real emergencies, thereby inducing higher levels of arousal and hence more helping." They also "identified situations where bystanders provide welcome physical support for the potentially intervening individual and thus reduce the bystander effect, such as when the bystanders were exclusively male, when they were naive rather than passive confederates or only virtually present persons, and when the bystanders were not strangers."

An alternative explanation has been proposed by [[Stanley Milgram]], who hypothesized that the bystanders' callous behavior was caused by the strategies they had adopted in daily life to cope with [[information overload]]. This idea has been supported to varying degrees by empirical research.<ref>Christensen, K. & Levinson, D. (2003). [https://books.google.com/books?id=t1geOjQ6R0MC&pg=PA662 ''Encyclopedia of community: From the village to the virtual world'', Band 1], p. 662.</ref>

Timothy Hart and Ternace Miethe used data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and found that a bystander was present in 65 percent of the violent [[victimization]]s in the data. Their presence was most common in cases of physical assaults (68%), which accounted for the majority of these violent victimizations and less likely in [[robberies]] (49%) and [[sexual assaults]] (28%). The actions of bystanders were most frequently judged by victims as "neither helping nor hurting" (48%), followed by "helping" (37%), "hurting" (10%), and "both helping and hurting" (3%). Half of the attacks in which a bystander was present occurred in the evening, where the victim and bystander were strangers.<ref name="Hart & Miethe (2008)">{{cite journal|last=Hart|first=T.|author2=Miethe, T.|title=Exploring Bystander Presence and Intervention in Nonfatal Violent Victimization: When Does Helping Really Help?.|journal=Violence and Victims|year=2008|volume=23|issue=5|pages=637–651|doi=10.1891/0886-6708.23.5.637|pmid=18958990|hdl=10072/53930|s2cid=12862996|hdl-access=free}}</ref>