By Anna Tanji
Pelican: (spotting a choking fellow pelican) Hey, hey,
Nigel. Heh, would you look at that? Sun's barely up and already Gerald's had
more than he can handle.
Nigel: Yeah. Reckon somebody oughta help the poor guy.
(All the pelicans murmur and nod but do nothing.)
Nigel: ...well, don't everybody fly off at once.
—Finding Nemo
The
Bystander Effect turns out to be extremely present in everyday life, whether it
is the homeless man being ignored in a crowded subway station or the teacher
that cannot get his projector to work as the class sits and watches him
struggle. And while in the example from Finding Nemo it is amusing and comical
that all of the other pelicans are fine with sitting tight while their peer
chokes to death, other cases are not so light-hearted. I became familiar with the phenomenon long
before I enrolled in this class.
My high
school had a program called “Transition” in which juniors and seniors led
groups of freshman through different activities once a month to talk to them
about their own experiences as freshmen, teach them about high school, and try
to help make the transition into 9th grade easier. One of the first activities we did when I was
a freshman in Transition was read a story aloud about a woman named Kitty
Genovese. Kitty Genovese was stabbed
while walking from her car to her apartment one night in Queens. Although she screamed for help for 15 minutes
and 37 witnesses were recorded, not one person in the neighborhood helped her
until it was too late. After reading and
analyzing this story as a freshman, and then again as a junior Transition
leader, and then again as a senior Transition leader, I was well aware of the
implications of the bystander effect.
However, in
one experiment performed by Stephen M. Garcia, Kimberlee Weaver, John M.
Darley, and Bryan T. Spence, it was found that the presence of implicit
bystanders may, in some cases, increasing helping behavior. The researchers manipulated the participants
perceived level of public scrutiny, and found that when the participants felt
they were under public scrutiny, their helping behavior (involvement in
non-profit organizations) increased.
Therefore, when bystanders feel disregarded by other bystanders, their
action is inhibited, and when bystanders feel scrutinized by other bystanders,
their action is encouraged.
I
experienced this one morning over the summer at the pool where I worked as a
lifeguard for two summers. I was on duty
at 8:30am, before the pool was open to the public (there was only a swim meet
going on). I was not on stand, so I was
in the guard room with the other guards.
The pool used for meets is on the upper deck, far from the guard
room. Usually if there is an emergency
on the upper deck, the guard that is making the save blows his or her whistle,
and then all of the guards on the surrounding stands blow their whistles to
ensure that all of the guards in the guard room here and go sprinting up there
to help. However, because the pool was
not officially open, when the guard on stand at the swim meet blew her whistle
to go help the swimmer that dislocated his shoulder, no one else was around to
make sure the other guards knew. After
about 30 seconds (a very long time for a situation like this), she blew her
whistle again and we all heard so we ran up and sprung into action. As the boy was unable to climb out of the
pool, we back-boarded him and got him on land and began to make a sling for
him. While he was being back-boarded, I
asked my manager if anyone had called 911 for an ambulance yet, and he
responded with a blank stare.
Immediately, I sprinted to the manager’s office to get the phone and
called 911. I was furious at first that
he had forgotten such an essential part of our staff’s action plan for any kind
of emergency, but now I am aware of two reasons why this would have
happened. First, that particular manager
is relatively knew and is the only manager on staff that did not start out as a
lifeguard. He never went through the
lifeguarding training and had it drilled into his head to never assume that a
bystander will call 911. We must
delegate a specific person to do it or do it ourselves. Second, in such a situation, lifeguards feel
public scrutiny and therefore feel pressure to act; their behavior is not
inhibited, as the experiment explains.
The patrons of the pool look to the lifeguards to take action, and that
is why I was more than ready to do so.
While I don’t
plan on returning to the pool to work another summer as a lifeguard, I am
thankful for the life lessons I have learned from the extensive training I received. Clearly, it can carry over from my
professional life to my social life.
Works Cited
Garcia, S. M., Weaver, K., Darley, J. M., & Spence, B. T. (2009). Dual effects of implicit bystanders: Inhibiting vs. facilitating helping behavior. Journal Of Consumer Psychology, 19(2), 215-224. doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2009.02.013
