Latane And Darley Bystander Effect Essay

The hypothesis based on the findings of Latane and Darley (1968) that as the number of participants increased, help would become less likely was somewhat supported. The results in the graph Percentage of people who helped/did not help highlighted that the bystander effect occurred as the smallest group size had the highest help rate of 100%, and the percentage of participants who helped in the group of 19 was higher than that of the group of 35, 10.5% and 2.90% respectively. However, the groups of 3 and 10 did not support the hypothesis as they had a help rate of 0.
The bystander effect model developed by Lantane and Darley (1970) explains the results in the graph Percentage of people who helped/ did not help. Each participant in this experiment went through at least the first stage of the model. Though findings from Latane and Darley (1968) suggest that those in a group take about 4 times as long as those alone to notice an event, participants in this experiment all noticed the emergency as the confederate fell over in their near vicinity and loud enough to …show more content…
Though the participants were not an extremely wide demographic, the findings of the current study are valid as they were tested under controlled conditions and participants were selected randomly. This experiment could be improved by incorporating a wider demographic of males, young children, adults and the elderly. Factors which effected the diffusion of responsibility, such as pluralistic ignorance, time pressures, and similarity, could be researched independently to locate the influences which affect all of these concepts. The findings of this study may be used by social scientists, criminologists and the likes to explore the issues around why people are more likely to ignore a person in distress when others are