Batman and Diffusion of Responsibility or “The Bystander Effect” – my Athens Digital Week speech

The latest of my science speeches, this one was part of a group presentation titled “The Science of Superheroes” given during 2010′s Athens Digital Week. My topic was “Batman and diffusion of responsibility”. Diffusion of responsibility also happens to be the topic I would’ve chosen for the FameLab finals (which I never attended. Because I was in the army). The material is heavily sourced from chapter 4 of Opening Skinner’s Box, by Lauren Slater, and from Wikipedia.

(For the Greek version click here.)

I would like to talk to you about Batman and diffusion of responsibility.
Diffusion of responsibility is what happens whenever someone says “OK, I need volunteers for toilet cleaning”: everybody suddenly develops an interest in their fingernails, accompanied by an intense urge to whistle.
It happens to all of us. In fact, it’s one of the strongest and most replicable phenomena in social psychology. As the number of witnesses to an event rises, it becomes less and less likely for anyone of them to intervene.
After all, a sense of responsibility is possibly a hero’s most important quality. Batman, famously, doesn’t have any powers. He’s rich. He could be living a cushy, priviledged life. What makes him say: “only I can save Gotham city”?
Borderline psychosis.
Yet his psychosis is combined with an unusually developed sense of duty.
Of course, there’s a different superhero much better suited to talking about responsibility: Spiderman. Unfortunately, Spiderman was already taken.

It all starts with Kitty Genovese. Kitty Genovese is dead. She was murdered in 1964 outside her appartment in Queens, New York.
The reason Kitty’s murder is important is that, according to newspaper accounts, it took place over more than half an hour and was witnessed by around 38 people: her neighbours.
Kitty was a bartender. On her way home from work late one night, she was attacked and stabbed. Her yells drew the attention of her neighbours, and managed to scare the assailant off. Nevertheless, 10 minutes later, he was back to finish what he started.
The murder caused great outrage. Newspapers accused the 38 bystanders who heard the screams and didn’t help of being as guilty as the murderer. Violent movies and television were accused of desensitizing the public (no video games back then, though).

The witnesses’ inaction also prompted Bibb Latané and John Darley to conduct an experiment.
A student would enter a room with a microphone and a light. Whenever the light was on, he was invited to talk about the problems of student life. “Yesterday my coffee got cold before I had time to finish it.” “There’s always so much month left at the end of the money.” Whenever the light was off, he would listen to other students talking, all of them recordings of actors. At some point, one “student” would suddenly suffer an epileptic seizure.
What Darley and Latané found was that the probability of the real student running out to ask for help was inversely related to the number of “students” he thought were participating in the experiment. Whenever it was more than 3 or 4, the subject would rationalize: “someone else is bound to help” and do nothing. Only when under the impression that it was just him and the epileptic kid, could he be counted upon to call for assistance.

Apparently, most human beings would let someone die, or at least suffer, rather than stand out from the crowd.
Well, what if we are the ones in danger?
The scientists came up with the following scenario:
Three people enter a room, two of them are actors. They are asked to fill out a simple questionnaire. After some time, white smoke starts filtering in through the air vents. The subject notices and turns to his fellows, confused. Totally indifferent, they just keep on filling out answers. And that’s what he does, too. The study found that the vast majority of people would keep on writing, even while a thin film of white dust gathered on their head and shoulders!

Humans are pre-eminently social animals. In fact, it appears our need to “fit in” is so overwhelmingly powerful, that it suppresses our very instinct to survive! We would literally rather die than cause a scene.

Thankfully, a different, lesser known, scientist named Arthur Beaman decided to fight this. He discovered that, once someone is aware of his natural inclination to stand by idly, he becomes much more likely to offer help when needed.
And that’s what I hope to have achieved, today. To bring each of you just a little bit closer to becoming a hero.

Beaman’s 5-step plan to cure bystander apathy:

1. You, the potential helper, must notice an event is occuring.
2. You must interpret the event as one in which help is needed.
3. You must assume personal responsibility.
4. You must decide what action to take.
5. You must then take action.

Also, if you haven’t read Opening Skinner’s Box, do so. It’s a collection of the 10 most important psychological experiments of the 20th Century, and it’s fantastic! If you thought this was interesting, just wait till you find out about Cognitive Dissonance, False Memory or the Rat Park experiment.

Greek version after the jump
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