The Bystander Effect - Standing Up From the Crowd - Extra Credits

TODAYonline I refer to the news reports of the fatal traffic accident on Sunday (Dec 29) at Lucky Plaza. I applaud the Good Samaritans who unselfishly helped to lift up the car, pulled the victims out and attended to them. These are acts of true heroism. They encourage us to lend help to accident victims when needed and show that there are still compassionate people who don’t respond to accidents by whipping out their phones first to take videos and photos to circulate to their friends. In Sunday’s incident, one of the first things a bystander could do was to rush to the nearby Mount Elizabeth Hospital Accident and Emergency Department to seek help, as it would have the necessary medical equipment and trauma specialists on duty. straitstimes SINGAPORE - Mr Syed Zukarnain and his wife were giving a lift to a man and his pregnant wife who were heading to the hospital to deliver their baby. But caught in morning traffic, the baby girl simply couldn't wait - she was born in their car, 15 minutes away from Singapore General Hospital (SGH). The 46-year-old document controller detailed the experience in a Facebook post on Wednesday.

What Is the Bystander Effect? If you witnessed an emergency happening right before your eyes, you would certainly take some sort of action to help the person in trouble, right? While we might all like to believe that this is true, psychologists suggest that whether or not you intervene might depend upon the number of other witnesses present. What Is the Bystander Effect? The term bystander effect refers to the phenomenon in which the greater the number of people present, the less likely people are to help a person in distress. When an emergency situation occurs, observers are more likely to take action if there are few or no other witnesses.

How to Overcome the Bystander Effect Psychologists have long been interested in exactly why and when we help other people. There has also been a tremendous amount of interest in the reasons why we sometimes don't help others. The bystander effect is a social phenomenon that occurs when people fail to help those in need due to the presence of other people. In many cases, people feel that since there are other people around, surely someone else will leap into action.1 While the bystander effect can have a negative impact on prosocial behavior, altruism and heroism, researchers have identified a number of different factors that can help people overcome this tendency and increase the likelihood that they will engage in helping behaviors.2 Some of these include: Witnessing Helping Behavior

10 Notorious Cases of the Bystander Effect The bystander effect is the somewhat controversial name given to a social psychological phenomenon in cases where individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The probability of help has in the past been thought to be inversely proportional to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help. This list describes the prototype of the effect and cites nine particularly heinous examples. Singapore bystander CPR rate 'extremely low', Health News SINGAPORE - Wedneday's report ("Motorcyclist, 38, dies in Braddell Road accident") about a 19-year-old student who performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on a road accident victim clearly demonstrates that people are prepared to help others in need and try to save lives. The student's actions should be highly commended. Providing bystander first aid in the form of CPR, using an automated external defibrillator (AED) and trying to stem external bleeding are all forms of positive action meant to save lives.

12-year-old boy rushes to aid of car accident victims in Yishun, Singapore News SINGAPORE - A 12-year-old boy who rushed to the aid of victims of a car accident in Yishun on Tuesday (May 31) said he did so as other passers-by were "too busy taking pictures with their phones instead of helping". Yishun Primary School student Ashvin Gunasegaran was walking home from school with several classmates when they heard a "loud boom" behind them as they crossed the road. Turning around, they saw two cars had collided just metres away at the junction of Yishun Ring Road and Yishun Avenue 2. While his friends told him to stay away as it was "too dangerous", Ashvin said he ran over to the drivers of each car after seeing that no adults were coming forward to offer assistance. "It was my first instinct - I felt I had to check if they were okay and if they needed an ambulance," he told The Straits Times. "One of the drivers was pregnant, she said she was not injured but asked for my help in finding her glasses.

It looks like human beings might be Good Samaritans after all A few years ago, I was assaulted on a busy street in London by a man who came up behind me. Some details of the assault are hazy, others pin-sharp. I recall exactly what my attacker did, and that the assault was witnessed by rush-hour drivers sitting at a red light. If there were pedestrians nearby, I do not remember them, though the situation suggests that there were people at hand. I do remember that no one came to my aid. How to Break the Bystander Effect They could have left it to someone else. An Army veteran blocked a shooter in Oregon from entering his classroom. Three friends on a high-speed train from Paris to Amsterdam helped stop a gunman wielding an AK-47. This past spring, an Army captain in North Carolina pulled a couple to safety after a fiery car crash. Were these men instinctively courageous, or had they learned to be? The Army captain (aptly wearing a Captain America T-shirt) credited his military training for knowing what to do and remaining calm.