The Individual Bystander Effect

1757 Words8 Pages
Bystander Effect: The Individual and Those Who Acted Altruistically The bystander affect is a well-known social behavior event where individuals within a group do not offer any help to a victim when other people are in that group. In this paper, I will examine not only the individual bystanders, but also the individuals who were not bystanders in the 1930’s and what compelled them to resist the status quo of the time. To speak on the bystander’s effect, we must know what that is. Psychology today writes “The bystander effect occurs when the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in an emergency situation”. This relationship between number of people and lack of response is an inverse relationship, meaning that the more…show more content…
Starting with Nicholas Winton, he is a perfect example of an Upstander, someone who decides to help because others are not. His motivation was to help children escape the evil with his Kindertransport. This mans sole reasons for helping these children is because it was the right thing to do. His actions are truly altruistic. Oskar Schindler on the other hand, is a man of turned conscience. He originally sought to earn a profit from his actions but later decided against such actions. This falls in line with a guilty conscience and reparations for his mistakes as a motivation to action against something he helped create. Altruism or making up for previous mistakes, I’ll let you decide. . Varian Fry was another of the “Righteous among the Nations”. His motivations to help Jews were purely because of what he saw during his berlin visit. This is an example of a man doing something regardless of the actions of everyone else around him. Not only were his actions inconsistent with the bystander effect, he actively ignored it. Lastly is Giorgio Perlasca, a man who not unlike Varian Fry, was inconsistent/ignored with the bystander effect. In addition to this, he was aware everyone was doing nothing, so he took action into his own hands and sheltered thousands of people. All four of these men are hero’s, no matter their motivations for doing so and all in doing so acted for the most altruistic
Open Document