In the book “Opening Skinners Box”, Kitty Genovese was standing outside her apartment being viciously stabbed. During this attack bystanders present took no action to help her. In our culture this effect is common. Many may remember the beating of Reginald Denny who was pulled from his semi-truck and beaten on a busy Los Angeles street in 1992 in a racially motivated retaliation as part of race riots. The incident was filmed live by a news helicopter and many were present, yet know one stopped the attack.
In the following paragraphs, a closer look at why this phenomenon occurs commonly known as the “Bystander effect” will be examined utilizing academic sources to show the psychological effects leading to inaction, cultural, gender influences…show more content… One university implemented educating through interactive bystander education classes and bystander themed self-helped posters. The self-help posters were themed as “know your power” posters, they depict potential sexual assault or other interpersonal violence situations in which peers notice what’s happening and act to ensure others are safe” (Katz et al 2). Furthermore they found “that bystander education empowers community members to prevent sexual assault by helping onlookers notice risk and respond constructively to promote safety” (Katz et al 2). It is surmised by as reinforced by the colleges study that conscious awareness through education and reinforcing action during potential events as illustrated by the posters can reduce bystander effect. This approach brings a higher consciousness to act in certain circumstance versus waiting for others. Slater also tells us that in Darley and Latanes research, an exercise with student participants showed smoke and seizure experiment films where a victim needed help. They reinforced the five stages of being a helper in order the first being, “you the potential helper must notice an event is occurring, Second, you must interpret the event as one in which help is needed, Thirdly, you must assume personal responsibility, fourth, must decide what action to take, and finally you must then take action” ( Slater 109). After…show more content… In a study by Barliska, Szuster and Winiewski, they looked to understand how adolescents respond to cyberbullying as bystanders and look to what influenced their actions... They looked specifically at and defined cyberbullying can be “intimidation, and blackmail, but the most common form in the population of teenagers is verbal bullying. A key factor in this is the perceived online anonymity” (Barlinska, Szuster and Winiewski 38). The study looked at online face to face empathy activation, effective and cognitive and the gender factor. They found that “gender does not affect negative bystander behavior when it comes to cyberbullying. Barinska, Szuster and Winiewski relate that the “experience of being a cyberbullying victim was not found to be associated with involvement in behavior that supported bullying, whether online or in face-to-face contact” (38).
The study looked at empathy, however in our context it will be use in our bystander effect analysis. The idea is to remove the audience, add privacy and some anonymity of the cyber world to see the effect of the conditions as it applies to empathy where bullying is