What inaction consists of
- Notice: in the noise and rush, much simply never enters your field of attention
- Recognize a problem: the calm faces around you suggest that nothing is happening
- Take responsibility: the more people there are, the easier it is to assume someone else will help
- Know what to do: when people do not know how to help, they are more likely to do nothing
The second level is the most insidious. A person looks around, sees unruffled passersby and concludes that they must be mistaken; meanwhile, each of those people is doing exactly the same thing and reaching the same conclusion.
The third level explains the numbers. When a witness is alone, they often intervene; when there are ten of them, the likelihood of each person intervening falls because responsibility is spread among everyone and ends up with no one.
What we know more precisely
An important update from recent years: when real street conflicts were filmed, help turned out to arrive in most cases after all. What matters is not the complete absence of help, but the delay and the fact that a smaller share of those present intervenes.
The famous story that launched the entire field has also been clarified. Later checks showed that some details in the newspaper report had been exaggerated: there were fewer witnesses, and some did call the police.
Historical cases add other reasons. Silence may not be psychological but calculated: fear of retaliation, dependence on the person responsible, having nowhere to report it, and the belief that reporting it will change nothing.
That is why analyses of such cases look not only at people but also at the system: was there a way to report anonymously, was the person who reported it protected, and did anything happen afterward.
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Sources
- Experiments have documented a decrease in the likelihood that an individual witness will intervene as the number of witnesses increases
- analyses of video recordings of real conflicts show that intervention occurs in most cases, but with a delay and from a smaller share of those present. The circumstances of the original newspaper account that launched the research were later clarified