Why people don't help out.

If you were to see a woman being attacked in the park, you would help her out, right? Same goes for if you saw a 40 year old man raping a 10 year old boy in the showers I'll bet.

At least, in your mind, you're convinced that you would jump in and do something, even if it was just to alert the police or holler at the attackers to attempt to stop what is happening.

But, in a real world situation, would we really do what we know in our minds is the right thing?

Let’s All Feel Superior

Over the course of history — during the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide or the street beatings that happen in American neighborhoods — the same pattern has emerged. Many people do not intervene. Very often they see but they don’t see.

Some people simply can’t process the horror in front of them. Some people suffer from what the psychologists call Normalcy Bias. When they find themselves in some unsettling circumstance, they shut down and pretend everything is normal.

Some people suffer from Motivated Blindness; they don’t see what is not in their interest to see. Some people don’t look at the things that make them uncomfortable.

So many people do nothing while witnessing ongoing crimes, psychologists have a name for it: the Bystander Effect. The more people are around to witness the crime, the less likely they are to intervene.

People are really good at self-deception. We attend to the facts we like and suppress the ones we don’t. We inflate our own virtues and predict we will behave more nobly than we actually do. As Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel write in their book, “Blind Spots,” “When it comes time to make a decision, our thoughts are dominated by thoughts of how we want to behave; thoughts of how we should behave disappear.”

Commentators ruthlessly vilify all involved from the island of their own innocence. Everyone gets to proudly ask: “How could they have let this happen?”

The proper question is: How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive. That was the proper question after Abu Ghraib, Madoff, the Wall Street follies and a thousand other scandals. But it’s a question this society has a hard time asking because the most seductive evasion is the one that leads us to deny the underside of our own nature.

NY Times


I know, in my mind, that if I were to come across one of those situations, I would leap to the rescue of the person being victimized. But, when I think about it, if I were out with my children or if I thought helping might put me or the kids in too much danger, either physically or legally, I'm not so sure I would have the courage to intervene.

Its easy to criticize the people we see in all those videos who stand by and do nothing but, until we are really in their shoes, we don't know how we would really react.

If this applies to situations where one person is confronted by a single attacker, imagine how this effect works throughout society when we see a government cracking down and oppressing their people.

We, as individuals, are too weak to stop the oppression so we go on as if nothing is happening, so long as we are not personally involved. If we do try to get involved, what do you think the odds are that, if you were to try to rally others to your cause, they wouldn't crawl back into their shell of ignorance and leave you to stand alone.

The tendency to go along to get along seems to be programmed into the human condition and breaking that programming in enough people to break free of the system may be the greatest challenge faced by anyone seeking real change.

Well honestly I would've intervene if I saw a kid being raped by an old man, but hey what do I know I'm young.

I think that its horrible knowing that if something was happening to me in front of people that no one would intervene. I am also aware that sometimes if just one person steps forward that it can help others to feel more secure knowing that someone had the strength to help out a fellow person.

It is still a chance that has to be taken. It was kind of a clue that this was happening, when women are sometimes told that if there is something happening to them in the street instead of just screaming, to yell fire.

We dont always have to believe in heroes in order to become one!

Peace, NRE.
S&F.

reply to post by FortAnthem


Several years ago....I was out for a walk.....in a fairly secluded downtown park......as I was walking I noticed a little girl....(she was 8 at the time) and she was walking alone......and there were some men following her.....getting ready to grab her......I walked over to her and said "Oh there you are daughter....please don't leave my side again!"

It turns out she lived in an apartment building near the park and decided (without her real mothers permission) to go for a walk. Thankfully the little girl new where she lived. We got to the apartment building and I had her ring the apartment...then I talked to the speaker and told the mother to come down....I had found her daughter. When The mother came down....I gave her a lecture on child safety...she thanked me and was very grateful. She stood there and took my lecture ( I was somewhat angry). They both gave me a hug.,,,and I went home.

So..yes... I know I would intervene.

reply to post by FortAnthem


I had a friend who used to always insist that we never really know what we are going to do until we've done it. I think this is a truism but not necessarily true. Martial artists condition their bodies, just as all athletes do, to act in ways that respond to the unknown, and in that regard one is doing this to condition themselves to properly act when sidelined by the unknown. We can know how we will act if we have conditioned ourselves, meaning we have prepared ourselves for those events we believe are important.

Robert Greene, in his disturbing must read book The 48 Laws of Power, speaks to the disturbing nature of his book in his prologue and explains that we have been conditioned to act as if we live in a peaceful civilized world when nothing further can be from the truth, and life is a phenomenon that happens amidst a brutally cold, cruel physical universe. If we want to be heroic, we must prepare for the adventures to come once we become a hero. That preparation will dictate whether we become tragic heroes, or triumphant heroes.

You have some of the best threads on this site, my friend. It is always a joy to stop by and read your threads.

over the years in my travels have seen a few situations like that and stepped in to assist.

wouldnt be able to look at myself in the mirror if just passed by and did nothing.

Difference in both generations and cultures...

Would still step in if see a situation where its needed.

There used to be what we called 'swarms' here, its usually close to summer,
These kids go out, i dont know how many, say 20 of them. And will gang beat whomever. It was a problem a few years back, but im not so sure now
But me and my friend would run ourselves through on the situation if it ever arose, if we saw someone getting robbed, or if it happened to us.

We wouldn't go down without a fight, he taught me some good multi-person fighting techniques, And im crazy as hell when im mad, there is -no- stopping me,
And i have a thick head, , i dont get knocked out easy. And im not stupid enough to leave myself open like that either,

It's really difficult to know how you would react in the scenarios outlined in the OP. Although I like to think I would do the right thing, I fear that maybe in some case I may be too much of a coward to step in help appropriately. I'm well aware of my weakness's.

Hopefully I never find myself in a situation where I am put to the test in such a way.

I have a strong stand on this: it takes two to tango !
criminals against human rights probably exercised their power for a long time ! did we not notice ?
every time a child gets away with dominance over weaker ones, every time a child gets away without education by adults for its misbehaving it gets a step further to do so for its own pleasure without considering other people. it sets a behavioral pattern for the rest of its life.
I know we do not have much time for education at home. we did tell the child a hundred times, didn’t we?
and how about the bullies at school and the bullies at work ? how far can they go before they are stooped in their tracks? when does our duty of care kick in ?
how often do we speak up and risk ourselves ? risk a head-on argument although we know we can’t talk as swift as the others? risk to be called a whinger for writing unanswered report after report ? risk to fall to pieces because we left it that late to bring up the subject that our nerves let us down ?
how often do we support a person in their endeavor and difficulty to stand up to do right ? do we have to see a person is beaten in front of us to help ?
it starts with self respect and doing the right thing instantly at the sight of the slightest harm.
little things are fixed easier. it starts with education.
I’m definitely not a swift talker, forgive, but
I’m not surprised to read only replies supporting the topic ………….. “People are really good at self-deception. We attend to the facts we like and suppress the ones we don’t. We inflate our own virtues”

Personally, I've been on both sides of this; in one case, I acted to help another in trouble, in another I stood by, frozen by indecision and let matters play out.

The first instance happened on a snowy night. My wife called for me to come help her as she had gotten her car stuck in a blizzard. I gathered up the kids, loaded them up in my big, smelly Expedition and got half way to where she was when she called up and said she got unstuck so I pulled into a parking lot to wait for her to pass by and follow her home. While sitting in the lot, I saw a woman in a car having a difficult time getting out of her parking spot. She was parked at the bottom of a hill and was just spinning her wheels. I sat and watched her making absolutely no progress for about 10 minutes, torn between the duty to help out and the fear of leaving my kids in the car unattended. Finally I decided to get out and help. It took about 30 minutes to get her from the parking spot to the street where she could drive freely and I was sore as hell afterwards but, the feeling of accomplishment more than made up for it as I watched her drive off.

The 2nd instance happened at home. I was awakened late at night by banging from the shop below my apartment. I grabbed my gun and my phone and went into my kid's room to see what was going on outside. I saw a few guys rushing around outside and then heard a loud crash and then the alarm go off from the store below. A few moments later, they rushed out of the back of the store carrying the cash register. It took them a few minutes to fit it into their car with me watching the whole time. I thought about calling the police but worried that they might be armed and would see the light from the cell phone if I attempted to make the call. I was afraid they might shoot into my children's bedroom and hit one of them if they saw me. I watched them drive away and still didn't call the police; I had called to report a deer accident weeks earlier and was scolded by the dispatcher because they had received multiple calls. I figured they already knew about the break-in from the alarm and would be there shortly. They didn't arrive for at least 45 minutes. By that time I decided not to make a call just out of curiosity to see how long it would take the cops to show up. When they did show up, I told them what had happened but, it being dark outside, I couldn't give them a good description or even the direction the car went.

In both cases I hesitated, thinking about the dangers to me and my family. In the one case I acted but, in the other I did not. Maybe nobody got hurt because of my inaction but, I can't help but wonder if I had called the police whether they would have been able to catch the thieves that night.

When we are called upon to be heroes, we have to weigh the potential costs before taking action. Sometimes, the time it takes to make that decision results in us standing by passively while others are harmed. No matter how well you prepare yourself, you never really know until you are standing there with the decision to intervene confronting you.

We all like to say we'd step in... but as others have said I think it comes down to the situation, and how your mind almost instantly weighs things up.

This story takes place on a Saturday night, on a fairly busy street, surrounded by pubs and takea ways full of people who could see me.

I saw a girl being attacked by two other girls (about 16-17 and I'm 19) one night whilst I was out drinking with friends... so I ran over and stepped in between without really thinking. My mind had said I don't feel threatened too much by this I can stand there until the girl gets away.

But nobody else did.

They started hitting me and again my mind said this isn't hurting me much and the girl behind me is still too shocked to have gone. So I stood my ground and hoped someone else would come over for a bit of moral support.

But nobody else did.

A guy stepped infront of me about my age and pushed me, then my mind started going into overdrive. The girl behind me STILL hadn't moved, it hadn't turned overly violent YET and there must have been around 50 people who could see me without moving, so I was fairly confident now at least someone would come and help. So again I stood my ground to protect the girl.

Again nobody came to help.

There were 6 guys in the end who attacked me, and only 1 single person tried to help, my friend. Only 1...hundreds of other people in the surrounding area but none of them tried to help they all just stared and a couple of them called the police. They simply watched as I was outnumbered, knocked to the ground, knocked unconcious and then these 6 guys proceeded to try and kill me by kicking me in the head. They were part of a crowd and nobody wanted to be the first one to act so they didn't.

But I refuse to accept that not even a single person would have come to help if they had been where I was when I first saw the girl attacked. The situation was different. I only intially stepped between two girls, from then on I was only standing my ground...for them, they had to run alone (someone has to be first) into a group of 6 people who were clearly extreemly violent, without knowing if anyone else would help. So they froze.

Now I'm fairly confident in their position I would have stepped in anyway, but I know thats because of life experiences. I have been close to suicide in my past and had plenty of near death experiences, I don't want to die at all. But it doesn't scare me as much anymore, that primal fear can quite easily be beaten.
And I know I couldn't live with myself if I did nothing and something happened to the person getting attacked. I would rather have died helping than lived knowing I let someone else die.

But those experiences arn't true for everyone, and those kind of thoughts wont cross everyones mind. Because for me those thoughts come before safety, for others safety is the first thought and that freezes them on the spot, at least for a short period of time.

Just like for me now, if I were to find myself in the same position I may well be frozen when my first thought becomes "remember what happened last time, you were so lucky to get out of it, nobody else is going to help, remember that."

Some people have it in them, some dont.


I am guilty of both. There has been times in my younger life where I could have intervened, but if I did, I would have been locked up as well for current unrelated misunderstandings =)

I saw this car smash into a block wall without trying to stop(driver must have been drunk and passed out at the wheel), I saw no effort of awareness.
There was 2 cars ahead of me, and they stopped.
But I didnt cause I couldnt have any problems with the police at the time.

There have been times though, where I saved quite a bit of people from getting beat down, or shot.
Saved two people from suicide.
Ive had my good moments as well as my bad.

I work at a college campus.

Yesterday, I was the first on the scene for two bike accidents. I stopped and offered assistance.

In both cases I was prepared to offer first aid as necessary.

If a young person was being attacked, I'd jump right in.