March 25, 2008
Oh! If only I was there, I would have intervened! These heartless people! What are our schools doing? We ought to send these people for moral education!
How can these people be so indifferent? How would they feel if they were the ones in need? I think they should put themselves in the victim's shoes, perhaps, then will they be able to see the importance of having a communal spirit and helping people in times of trouble.
Even if they were afraid that the other gang members might come after them, the least they should do is to inform the police about the incident. Standing there, doing nothing and enjoying the spectacle is simply absurd! I would never have done that!
How righteous! Such Justice! Indeed, we need more people such as these! IF, they actually do what they say.
These comments are frequently heard from the general public after incidents such as those mentioned in the post relating to the bystander effect. Indeed, their indignation is justified to a certain extent. However, their continuous, relentless and harsh verbal punishment on the bystanders are, quite simply, a reflection of yet another common and easily identifiable social phenomenon - The Fundamental Attribution Error.
The fundamental attribution error asserts that people tend to overestimate dispositional factors and underestimate situational factors when assessing a certain event. In this instance, it seems as though the respondents were united in one voice condemning the apathetic bystanders: they could have done more, their indifference was due to their wicked personalities and if we (the respondents) were present at the scene, we would have intervened.
The only problem is this: the accusers and the accused belong to the same society and they probably hold identical beliefs and social norms. Hence, it is extremely likely that they would have reacted in a similar way. Most bystander effect studies would lend support to this argument as it appears that a significant number of people are being mastered by social situations rather than being masters of it. So are the accusers condemning themselves indirectly?
The underlying source of such faulty attributions is the correspondence bias. The correspondence bias refers to the inclination to assume that people’s words and deeds reflect their traits, attitudes, or some other internal factor, rather than external situational factors. Hence, the respondents readily and willingly attributed the inaction of the bystanders as a testament of their poor character; failing to consider the shock, fear, inability, or other inhibitions that might have prevented them from offering help to the victims.
I was totally stunned by what happened… I knew I should have responded and intervened… but I was just too… stunned… by what happened…
There were too many of them. I wanted to help. In fact, I would definitely have gone forward if others have given an indication that they would do so as well. I couldn’t possibly have taken on all of them by myself.
The responses of the bystanders, on the other hand, reflect another underlying aspect of the fundamental attribution error – the actor-observer difference. The actor-observer difference states that actors in an event are inclined to make external attributions for their own behaviour, while observers of the same event make internal attributions for the same actor.
The comments from the respondents refer to the ‘observer’ part (a reflection of the correspondence bias), while comments from the bystanders refer to the ‘actor’ part of the phenomenon. There are several explanations for such attributions and only one would be illustrated here. Some theorists suggests that actors are more likely to focus their attention, hence attributing their behaviour, on the environmental and social settings, because the surroundings are more prominent to the actors. Whereas, the observers are more likely to narrow their focus on the actors, since they’re the performers of the social setting. Therefore, in this instance, the actors (bystanders) naturally accounted for their inaction by shifting some responsibility to the situational factors, such as being in shock and the size of the aggressive crowd.
In conclusion, whether or not a person is involved in a situation would definitely affect the attributions of behaviour to internal or external factors. It appears to be a case of having assess to various information, from dissimilar perspectives, interpreted differently leading to diverse conclusions.
Hence, rather than passing judgements on others based on limited information or our own incomplete perception and interpretation of the events, it is better not to judge at all. For when we judge, the same judgement will befall on us, and with whatever criteria we use, it will be used unto us as well. Hold that tongue from accusations and condemnation, for it may very well be the exact words that return to accuse and condemn us.
Eric Matthew wrote @ 6:38 PM