Bystander Behavior: A Case Study

The behaviour of bystanders, that is people who witnesses an emergency, has been studied by social psychologists in order to gain an understanding of the ways in which people respond to witnessing an event such as a crime, accident or other form of emergency situation taking place. By explaining the key points taken from two case studies which have been used by social scientists to build their arguments about the ways in which bystanders behave, this essay will first give two different examples of bystander behaviour, before identifying two different approaches that have been used by social psychologists and examining the variety of queries, evidence and claims that were presented as a result of these investigations, in order to identify both …show more content…
Subsequent police investigations revealed that 38 local residents had noticed the attack, some stating that they had heard her screaming for help, whilst others reported having witnessed the attack from their windows. Yet apart from one neighbour shouting from their home to leave her alone, and one eventually calling the police none of the witnesses took any steps to intervene in the assault. Professionals and social commentators believed that the bystander’s apathy resulted in a failure to withhold the duty of care expected of …show more content…
For example Latané and Darley’s experimental method collated a set of quantitative date, through studying the results derived from their controlled experiment, which they presented as evidence to support their claim. In contrast to this Levine used the discourse analysis approach, and gathered qualitative evidence to support his claim. This leads onto another difference in the methods of research applied during these two varying studies, in that Latané and Darley’s experiments were closely controlled, they were able to introduce variables, and manipulate the situation witnessed by the participants, this was not the case in Levine’s study, he retrospectively analysed a series of real life events, and concluded that his results showed the inaction of the bystanders in the Bulger case was not as a response to situational factors, such as the presence of other witnesses, indeed many had been alone when witnessing the behaviour yet still were unresponsive. This claim highlights further differences in the methods of inquiry, and the results drawn from each study, as Levine’s conclusion contradicts that of Latané and Darley’s bystander behaviour theory because the witnesses did not behave in a way that could be explained by applying Latané and Darley’s bystander effect