Bystander Intervention in Emergencies

Darley, J. M., & Latane, B. (1968). Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4), 377-383.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1968

DOI

10.1037/h0025589

Link

https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025589

Cited from

organizational_management, psychology

Cited by

4 citations across 4 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Bystander Effect
  • Help was nearly certain when the subject believed they were alone with the victim and dropped to roughly 30% when they believed four others could also hear.
• Responsibility Diffusion
  • A structural paradox in which spreading an obligation or responsibility across multiple agents reduces each individual agent's sense of personal accountability, producing net accountability decline despite distributed coverage, as Darley and Latané (1968) first demonstrated experimentally.

    This sourceFoundational experiment showing that the presence of additional bystanders systematically reduces each individual's likelihood of intervening, naming "diffusion of responsibility" as the mechanism.

Mechanisms

• Diffusion-to-Duty Conversion
  • Two dozen people are within ten feet, and the bystander effect is already at work

    This sourceShows that the bystander effect is at work in the described nonresponse.

• Watch Rotation and Delegation Lane
  • Contrast a bridge nominally watched by "the crew": a contact closes, and each person present assumes someone else is tracking it — a diffusion of responsibility that ends in a near-miss.

    This sourceDemonstrates that other potential helpers diffuse personal responsibility and suppress emergency response.

Verification

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