John Tumpane is a hero. On Wednesday, June 28, this Major League Baseball umpire was crossing the Roberto Clemente Bridge on his way to PNC Park in Pittsburgh, where he was to call ball and strikes in the Pirates’ game against the Tampa Bay Rays that night. He spotted a 23-year-old woman who had climbed over the railing and was looking down at the Allegheny River. As it turned out, she intended to commit suicide. Mr. Tumpane calmly attempted to talk her out of it, and eventually, with the help of some other passers-by, physically restrained her from jumping while another bystander called 911.
Mr. Tumpane received a standing ovation at PNC Park the following night, and the story received both local and some national attention in the news media, including a front-page article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the following day, quoting Dr. Christine Moutier of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention saying that he did all the right things. From the perspective of social psychology, the important point is that he didn’t fall victim to the bystander effect.
The bystander effect does not refer to the failure of bystanders to intervene in an emergency. It refers to the paradoxical finding that the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely and more slowly they are to intervene. Two social psychologists, John Darley and Bibb Latane, read about the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York City. It was originally reported that 38 people had witnessed the assault, yet no one intervened or called the police for 35 minutes. Darley and Latane hypothesized that the large number of bystanders was the key to understanding their failure to take action, and initiated a research program demonstrating that helping declines as group size increases. Researchers have recently concluded that the original news reports of Ms. Genovese’s death were exaggerated. Not all 38 people actually witnessed the murder and some of them called the police sooner than was originally reported. Nevertheless, the bystander effect has been replicated in dozens of studies.
It’s not that surprising that bystanders fail to intervene. As Darley and Latane point out, a bystander must successfully work through five steps before intervention can take place. He or she must:
- Notice the event
- Interpret it as an emergency
- Assume responsibility
- Know the appropriate form of assistance
- Implement a decision to help
The presence of others can interfere at any of these steps, but particularly the second and the third, where bystander intervention can be inhibited by either pluralistic ignorance or diffusion of responsibility.
Pluralistic ignorance. Is this really a suicide attempt, or is the young woman just clowning around? It would be embarrassing to make a fool of oneself by overreacting to a benign event. When in doubt, we look to other bystanders for cues to their interpretation of the situation. But they may also be trying to appear outwardly calm, looking to us for information. As a result, the bystanders could fall victim to pluralistic ignorance, in which a group of people arrive at a definition of the situation that is different from their individual first impressions. They may come to believe that nothing is wrong because no one else looks concerned.
We know from the newspaper article that Mr. Tumpane was initially uncertain about whether he was witnessing an emergency. He asked a couple in front of him, “What’s this lady trying to do?” and they said, “I don’t know.” Fortunately, this did not deter him from interpreting the situation as a possible emergency.
Diffusion of responsibility. We don’t know how many people were on the Clemente Bridge that afternoon. The article says it was “mostly empty.” This may have helped Mr. Tumpane to avoid diffusion of responsibility. If only one person had been aware of the emergency and failed to intervene, he or she might be considered responsible for the woman’s death. But the greater the number of bystanders, the more responsibility is diffused, or spread out, among the witnesses. With many bystanders, no one feels responsible.
Since there were at least a few other bystanders on the bridge that afternoon, we can credit Mr. Tumpane with taking the lead in assuming responsibility. He also knew how to help a person in distress and did so skillfully.
By the way, one of the take-homes from this research is that if you are ever the victim of an emergency in a busy environment, it is best to single out one of the bystanders (to avoid diffusion of responsibility), tell this person that you need help (to avoid pluralistic ignorance), and, if possible, tell him or her exactly what you need, i.e., “Call 911!”
Failures of bystanders to intervene in emergencies are often publicized by the news media. Such stories may unintentionally increase cynicism. Fortunately, Mr. Tumpane’s helpfulness also received media attention and recognition.
Another place people hear about bystander intervention or its absence is in social psychology classes. One group of researchers randomly assigned students to hear a lecture either on Darley and Latane’s experiments, which included information about how to respond appropriately to an emergency, or a totally different topic (the control group). Two weeks later, as part of what they thought was an unrelated study, each of these students encountered a young man lying motionless on the floor. Was he sick or injured, or merely drunk or asleep? Only 25% of the students in the control group stopped to help the student, but 43% of those who had heard the lecture on bystander intervention stopped to help. Far from perfect, but better.
People often claim they would like the media to tell them more good news. Publicizing successful instances of bystander intervention, along with information about how best to intervene, would seem to be win-win for both the news media and future victims of emergencies.
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