Bystander effect

Bystander effect is a social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present. The greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that one of them will help.

Quotes

• The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
  • Albert Einstein

• If the moderates fail to act now, history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr. (1958).

• My commandment is ‘Thou shall not stand idly by’. Which means, when you witness an injustice: Don’t stand idly by. When you hear of a person or a group being persecuted: Do not stand idly by. When there is something wrong with the community around you or far away: Do not stand idly by. You must intervene. You must interfere. And that is actually the motto of human rights.
  • Elie Wiesel, Commencement ceremony at Washington University in St. Louis (2011).

See also

• Bystander