WHY PEOPLE DON'T HELP IN EMERGENCIES
If you're in an emergency situation, the chances of you receiving help from witnesses may depend on your skin color and the number of bystanders.
So says John Dovidio, professor of psychology at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY. For the past 20 years, Dovidio has conducted research with Samuel L. Gaertner, a professor of psychology at the University of Delaware, on racism.
Gaertner and Dovidio found in one study that when white bystanders were the only witnesses to the emergency, they helped very frequently and equivalently for black and white victims. In fact they even helped black victims somewhat more often than white victims, 95 percent vs. 83 percent.
In contrast, when white bystanders were given an opportunity to rationalize not helping on the basis of the belief that one of the two other witnesses could intervene, they were less likely to help, particularly when the victim was African American. When participants believed that there were two other bystanders, they helped the black victim half as often as they helped the white victim, 38 percent vs. 75 percent.
"If this situation was real, the white victim would have died 25 percent of the time, the black victim would have died 62 percent of the time," says Dovidio. "The presence of other witnesses gave aversive racists the chance to justify not helping black victims without invoking race. They could let someone else help the blacks."
The study is part of a chapter, "On the Nature of Contemporary Prejudice: The Causes, Consequences, and Challenges of Aversive Racism," which Dovidio and Gartner contributed to the book, Confronting Racism: The Problem and the Response (Sage Publications, 1998).
This information could prove useful for stories on what motivates some bystanders to help out in an emergency while others turn away from the situation. The Kitty Genovese incident, which occurred in New York City in 1964, is a classic example. In that incident, Genovese was returning home one evening. As she entered the parking lot of her building, a man drove up, jumped out of his car and began to stab her. She screamed and lights went on in her building. The brutal attack continued for 45 minutes, but no one intervened or called the police. After he was sure she was dead, the assailant calmly got into his car and drove away. When the police arrived a short time later, they found that there were 38 witnesses who watched the event from beginning to end.
One explanation psychologists have developed for this, Dovidio says, concerns the bystander's sense of responsibility.
"When a person is the only witness to an emergency, that bystander bears 100 percent of the guilt and blame for not helping. If, however, a person witnesses an emergency but believes that somebody else can help or will help, then that bystander's personal responsibility is less clearly defined," says Dovidio.
"Under these circumstances, the bystander could rationalize not helping by coming to believe that someone else will intervene. Of course, if everybody believes that someone else will help, no one will intervene. That presumably was what occurred in the Kitty Genovese incident."
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Editors: If you're interested in pursing the story, you can reach Dovidio at 315-228-7349. If you like a copy of the book chapter call Steve Infanti of Dick Jones Communications at 814- 867-1963.
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